Foreign Correspondence A Pen Pal's Journey from Down Under to All Over

As a young girl in a working-class neighborhood of Sydney, Australia, Geraldine Brooks longed to discover the places where history happens and culture comes from, so she enlisted pen pals who offered her a window on adolescence in the Middle East, Europe, and America. Twenty years later Brooks, an award-winning foreign correspondent, embarked on a human treasure hunt to find her pen friends. She found men and women whose lives had been shaped by war and hatred, by fame and notoriety, and by the ravages of mental illness. Intimate, moving, and often humorous,Foreign Correspondencespeaks to the unquiet heart of every girl who has ever yearned to become a woman of the world.

Geraldine Brooks is also the author of <i>Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women</i> and a former foreign correspondent for <i>The Wall Street Journal</i>, where she reported on wars and famines in the Middle East, Bosnia, and Africa. A native of Australia and a graduate of Sydney University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she currently lives in Virginia with her husband and young son.