Neil Graham MacFarquhar is an American writer who is a national correspondent for The New York Times.
[2] After graduation, he returned to the Middle East, became fluent in Arabic, and covered the region for the Associated Press and then as The New York Times bureau chief in Cairo.
It was partly written during his recuperation from an accident where a runaway bus knocked MacFarquhar off his bicycle on Fifth Avenue in New York City.
MacFarquhar's second book, The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday: Unexpected Encounters in the Changing Middle East, is a journal of MacFarquhar's experiences in the region, starting with his childhood in Col. Gaddafi's Libya, and an assessment of the prospects for political and social change.
The book combines aspects of everyday life with the stories of individual men and women working for a freer Middle East.