Omar Yussef is a fictional character and the hero of a series of crime novels by Welsh writer
Matt Beynon Rees.
Character biography
According to the novels, Omar Yussef Subhi Sirhan, also known as Abu Ramiz (the father of Ramiz), was born in 1948 in
Malha
Malha is a neighborhood in southwest Jerusalem, between Pat, Ramat Denya and Kiryat Hayovel in the Valley of Rephaim. Before 1948, Malha was an Arab village known as al-Maliha ( ar, المالحة).
History Antiquity
Excavations in Malha revea ...
, a destroyed Palestinian village south of
Jerusalem
Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...
(''The Collaborator of Bethlehem'', Soho Crime, New York, February 2007). His father, the village mukhtar, or headman, fled with his family and the other villagers, on the creation of the Israeli state in the spring of that year. The Sirhan family went to the Dehaisha Refugee Camp, set up in fields south of
Bethlehem
Bethlehem (; ar, بيت لحم ; he, בֵּית לֶחֶם '' '') is a city in the central West Bank, Palestine, about south of Jerusalem. Its population is approximately 25,000,Amara, 1999p. 18.Brynen, 2000p. 202. and it is the capital o ...
. Omar's father rented a home and Omar continues to lease the same stone house.
Omar attended Damascus University and became involved in student politics. It was at University that he met Khamis Zeydan, a young Palestinian nationalist and a refugee from the coastal town of
Jaffa, who later became police chief in Bethlehem. Omar's adherence to the Pan-Arab
Ba'ath Party earned him the suspicion of the Jordanian regime. In early 1967 Omar was arrested by Jordanian police in Bethlehem and accused of murder. Omar later said the charges were false and that he had been jailed by political opponents eager to smear him (''A Grave in Gaza'', Soho Crime, New York, February 2008).
While traveling home at the end of the university semester in 1968, Omar met Maryam Hassan. Maryam was an educated young woman from a prominent family in the village of Mash’had outside
Nazareth. She had relatives in the Bethlehem area and was on her way to visit them, when she encountered Omar in a taxi near the West Bank town of
Jenin. They were married the following year.
On his return from university, Omar abandoned politics in favor of a quiet career as a history teacher. He taught at the school run by the Freres of St. John de la Salle in Bethlehem until the early 1990s. The school's pupils were drawn from the local Muslim and Christian populations. He was forced out of the school after a confrontation with a local schools inspector who considered Omar too critical of the new Palestinian Authority. Omar took a job at the United Nations Relief and Works Basic School for Girls in Dehaisha camp. The job was a step down in prestige from the Freres School, but it drew Omar into closer contact with the poorest refugees of Bethlehem and alerted him to their sufferings. Eventually this led him to reject the quiet life he had led and to attempt to confront the corruption and violence that engulfed his town.
Omar and Maryam have three sons. Ramiz, the eldest, runs a cellphone business in Bethlehem. He's married to Sara and has three children, Nadia (Omar's favorite grandchild), Little Omar, and Reem. Omar's second son, Zuheir, lives in Britain, where he teaches Islamic history at the University of Wales. The youngest son, Ala, is a computer salesman in New York.
Since his student days, Omar had been a heavy drinker and a compulsive smoker. Health problems in his mid-forties forced him to quit both. He continues to be in poor health, however, with shaking hands and arthritic joints.
Novels
* ''The Collaborator of Bethlehem'' (2007)
* ''A Grave in Gaza'' (2008)
* ''The Samaritan's Secret'' (2009)
* ''The Fourth Assassin'' (2010)
International Publications Featuring Omar Yussef
The Collaborator of Bethlehem (Soho Crime, New York 2007)
Le collaborateur de Bethléem (Albin Michel, Paris 2007)
Il Maestro di Betlemme (Cairo, Milano 2007)
The Bethlehem Murders (Atlantic, London 2007)
Publishing history
The first of the Omar Yussef Mysteries is ''The Collaborator of Bethlehem'' (published in the UK as ''The Bethlehem Murders''), which was published in English in 2007.
It was published in the U.S. by
Soho Press
Soho Press is a New York City-based publisher founded by Juris Jurjevics and Laura Hruska in 1986 and currently headed by Bronwen Hruska. It specializes in literary fiction and international crime series. Other works include published by it inclu ...
, in hardback in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth by
Atlantic Books
Atlantic Books is an independent British publishing house, with its headquarters in Ormond House in Bloomsbury, in the London Borough of Camden. It is perhaps best known for publishing Aravind Adiga's debut novel '' The White Tiger'', which r ...
and elsewhere. The
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
called ''The Collaborator of Bethlehem'', the first of the Omar Yussef books, “an astonishing first novel.”
The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publish ...
(London) hailed Omar as “the next big sleuth in crime fiction.”
Le Figaro
''Le Figaro'' () is a French daily morning newspaper founded in 1826. It is headquartered on Boulevard Haussmann in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. The oldest national newspaper in France, ''Le Figaro'' is one of three French newspapers of r ...
called the book “a masterpiece.” The books have sold in 14 different countries and 12 different languages.
The second Omar Yussef novel is ''A Grave in Gaza'' (published in the UK as ''The Saladin Murders'' by
Atlantic Books
Atlantic Books is an independent British publishing house, with its headquarters in Ormond House in Bloomsbury, in the London Borough of Camden. It is perhaps best known for publishing Aravind Adiga's debut novel '' The White Tiger'', which r ...
in January 2008).
The third,
The Samaritan's Secret, a set in Nablus, was published in the UK by Atlantic Books and in the US by SoHo Press in February 2009.
As of 2009, one or more of the novels had been published in 22 countries, and translations were available in languages including French, German, Italian and Indonesian.
Adaptation
''The Bethlehem Murders'' and ''The Samaritan's Secret'' were dramatised for BBC Radio, with
Peter Polycarpou
Peter Polycarpou is an English-Cypriot actor, best known for playing Chris Theodopolopodous in the television comedy series '' Birds of a Feather'' and Louis Charalambos in ''The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies''.
Early life
Polycarpou w ...
as Yussef.
External links
Matt Beynon Rees blogMatt Beynon Rees website*
ttp://www.jerusalem.com/discover/article_482/Real-life-mystery-fiction-out-of-Jerusalem Real-life mystery fiction out of JerusalemBoston Globe: Reporter Captures Fabric of Middle East in NovelTelling It Like It Is March 25, 2009 Avi Hoffmann, THE JERUSALEM POST
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Yusuf, Omar
Fictional male detectives
Fictional amateur detectives
Palestinian culture
Literary characters introduced in 2007
Characters in novels of the 21st century
Fictional Arabs