Book
My first book Notes on a Foreign Country was a Finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction, and the winner of the Overseas Press Club’s Cornelius Ryan Award for Best Nonfiction Book on International Affairs.
Here is an excerpt in the Guardian. You can buy it here:
And here are some reviews:
One of the Guardian’s “50 Writers You Should Read Now” – The Guardian
One of the New York Times’ “100 Notable Books of 2017″ – NYT
One of the “10 Best Books of 2017” – New York Magazine
One of “Our Favorite Books of 2017″ – The Progressive
One of the 25 “Best Books of 2017″ – Bookpage
One of LitHub’s “Best Reviewed History & Politics Books of 2017″ – Literary Hub
“Her book is a deeply honest and brave portrait of an individual sensibility reckoning with her country’s violent role in the world … ‘Notes on a Foreign Country’ is a sincere and intelligent act of self-questioning … Hansen is doing something both rare and necessary; she is tracing the ways in which we are all born into histories, into national myths and, if we are unfortunate enough, into the fantasies of an empire.” – Hisham Matar, The New York Times Book Review (cover review)
“A fluid amalgam of memoir, journalism and political critique — and a very readable challenge to American exceptionalism. Americans’ sense of their innocence, argues Hansen, renders them incapable not only of a sense of tragedy, but of love.” – Alice Troy-Donovan, Financial Times
“Notes on a Foreign Country has gotten a good deal of attention, and deservedly so … She is disarmingly candid … Hansen writes well, especially about architecture and cityscapes.” – Paul Baumann, Commonweal
“Extraordinary … This is a beautiful, angry, sad piece of writing that every American should read as we try to live in a world that has long known things about us that we are only now coming to understand.” – Ruth Conniff, The Progressive
“Passionately argued … An insightful writer with remarkable powers of observation.” – Kaya Genç, The New York Review of Books
“Her memoir is a piercingly honest critique of the unexamined white American life.” – The New Yorker
“Written with compassion and a deep thirst for justice, this book is a must for anyone struggling to make sense of the rapidly changing times we live in—one in which, as much our nation’s leaders continue to assert themselves, American hegemony is being ever more called into question.” – Jeannine M. Pitas, America: The Jesuit Review
“Hansen’s sustained self-criticism indicts the white American system itself and, in the process, does the field of journalism a great service with her humility, introspection, and willingness to defy the establishment line.” – Belen Fernandez, Jacobin
“This combination of historical and political analysis combined with Hansen’s musings about her own identity create a narrative that defies categorization. While it bears traces of memoir and of travel writing, her methodology also taps into ethnography and political theory. Moreover, Hansen pulls from a diverse and colorful range of literary sources that span various time periods, geographic locations, genres, and perspectives, from Orhan Pamuk to Don DeLillo, and from Abdelrahman Munif to Eric Bennett.” – Rebecca Barr, Los Angeles Review of Books
“It would be difficult for an American reader to not feel changed by this book.” – Andrew Wessels, Los Angeles Review of Books
“… A compelling exhortation to introspection: Hansen urges Americans to recognize the perspectives that shape — and sometimes distort — how they understand their country’s role in the world … She vividly captures the disorientation we experience when our preconceived notions collide with uncomfortable discoveries … It is rare and refreshing for an observer to exhibit this level of candor about her internal tensions … Timely and urgent.” – Ali Wyne, The Washington Post
“An eloquent, stimulating book that deserves a wide readership. It is also well-timed – articulating U.S. fatigue at a time when the country’s imperial star is in decline.” – William Armstrong, Hurriyet Daily News
“The innocuous title of Suzy Hansen’s “Notes on a Foreign Country” offers little sense of the eloquent and impassioned prose that lies within the book’s covers.” – Tom Zelman, Minneapolis StarTribune
“Notes on a Foreign Country is Hansen’s ardent, often lovely attempt to take self-awareness overseas … The one easy thing here is Hansen’s company. In Dubai, “sky and the water melt into an aluminum-hued oblivion.” A Hilton “had the benevolent totalitarian aesthetic of the United Nations.” A nurse speaks “in a tone that makes you want to put your head on her shoulder." If Noam Chomsky could write like this, Hansen’s work would already be done.” – Karl Vick, Time
"Hansen turns a coming-of-age travelogue into a geopolitical memoir of sorts, without sacrificing personal urgency in the process … Her long stay in Istanbul (she’s still there) gives her an outsider’s vantage on myopic American arrogance that is bracing. And her fascinating insider’s view of Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rise upends Western simplicities …The experience is contagious.” ―Ann Hulbert, The Atlantic
“Searching and searing … [Hansen] combines a brisk history of America’s anguished intervention in the region; artful reporting on how citizens in Turkey and its neighbors view the United States today; and unsparing self-reflection to explain how she, an Ivy League-educated journalist, could be so ignorant of the extent of her country’s role in remaking the post-World War II world … Hansen writes with both authority and humility and, occasionally, with sharp beauty.” – Barbara Spindel, The Christian Science Monitor
“Lucid, reflective, probing, and poetic, Hansen’s book is also a searing critique of the ugly depths of American ignorance, made more dangerous because the declining U.S. imperial system coincides with decay at home. The book is a revelatory indictment of American policy both domestic and foreign, made gripping by Hansen’s confident … distillation of complicated historical processes and her detailed, evocative descriptions of places, people, and experiences most American audiences can’t imagine.” ―Publishers Weekly (starred and boxed review)
“Hansen’s must-read book makes the argument that Americans, specifically white Americans, are decades overdue in examining and accepting their country’s imperial identity … [Her] argument goes beyond the factual assertion that Americans are ignorant of the country’s long, complicated, invasive histories with many other countries around the world. She makes the paradigm-breaking claim that what Americans are taught about their national and personal identities disallows the very acquisition of this knowledge.” – Booklist (starred review)
“To be an American is of itself, George Santayana once wrote, a moral condition and education. Notes on a Foreign Country embraces this fate with a unique blend of passionate honesty, coruscating insight, and tenderness. A book of extraordinary power, it achieves something very rare: it opens up new ways of thinking and feeling.” ―Pankaj Mishra, author of Age of Anger
“It is rare to come across an American writer who has moved through the world―especially the Islamic world―with the acute self-awareness and thoughtfulness of Suzy Hansen. She has deftly blended memoir, reportage, and history to produce a book of great beauty and intellectual rigor. Everybody interested in America and the Middle East must read it.” ―Basharat Peer, author of A Question of Order
“Notes On a Foreign Country is at once a kaleidoscopic look at modern Turkey, a meditation on American identity in an age of American decline, and a gripping intellectual bildungsroman. I’m in awe of this wise, coruscating book.” ―Michelle Goldberg, author of The Goddess Pose
“It’s really quite simple: if you have any interest at all in how the non-Western world views America and Americans, you must read Suzy Hansen’s beautifully composed memoir Notes on a Foreign Country. And when America’s leaders complain―while campaigning and in office―that there is “great hatred” for the U.S. (and that they want to get to the bottom of it), it should be required reading by government officials―all the way to the Oval Office.” ―Hooman Majd, author of The Ayatollah Begs to Differ