Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World

Suzy Hansen moved to Istanbul to understand the Muslim world and learned about her own country and herself. Notes on a Foreign Country is a moving reflection on America's place in the world, blending memoir, journalism, and history.

\n Format: Hardback
\n Length: 288 pages
\n Publication date: 04 January 2018
\n Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
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A profoundly honest and courageous portrayal of an individual's sensibility grappling with her country's violent role in the world.

Hisham Matar, New York Times Book Review

In the aftermath of the 11th September attacks and the US-led invasion of Iraq, Suzy Hansen, who grew up in an insular conservative town in New Jersey, was experiencing early success as a journalist for a prominent New York newspaper. However, the growing disjuncture between the chaos of global events and the response at home became increasingly urgent for her. Seeking to understand the Muslim world that had been reduced to sensational headlines, she relocated to Istanbul.

Hansen arrived in Istanbul with romantic notions about a mythical city situated between East and West, and with a naive understanding of the Islamic world beyond. Over the course of her numerous years of living in Turkey and traveling to Greece, Egypt, Afghanistan, and Iran, she gained extensive knowledge about these countries and their cultures, histories, and politics. However, the most profound and unsettling surprise would be what she learned about her own country—and herself—an American abroad in the era of American decline. It would require leaving her home to discover what she came to regard as the two Americas: the country and its people, and the experience of American power around the world.

She came to understand that anti-Americanism is not a violent pathology. It is, as Hansen writes, a broken heart. . . . A one-hundred-year-old relationship.

Blending memoir, journalism, and history, and possessing a keen sensitivity to the voices of those she encountered during her travels, Notes on a Foreign Country is a moving reflection on America's place in the world. It is a powerful journey of self-discovery and revelation—a profound reckoning with what it means to be American in a moment of profound uncertainty.

\n Weight: 418g\n
Dimension: 222 x 141 x 26 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9781472153890\n \n