Brooks's first book, Nine Parts of Desire (1994), based on her experiences among Muslim women in the Middle East, was an international bestseller. It was translated into 17 languages. Foreign Correspondence (1997), which won the Nita Kibble Literary Award for women's writing, was a memoir and travel adventure about a childhood enriched by penpals from around the world, and her adult quest to find them.
Her first novel, Year of Wonders, published in 2001, became an international bestseller. Set in 1666, the story depicts a young woman's battle to save fellow villagers as well as her own soul when the bubonic plague suddenly strikes her small Derbyshire village of Eyam.
Her next novel, March (2005), was inspired by her fondness for Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, which her mother had given her. To connect that memorable reading experience to her new status in 2002 as an American citizen, she researched the Civil War historical setting of Little Women and decided to create a chronicle of wartime service for the "absent father" of the March girls. Some aspects of this chronicle were informed by the life and philosophical writings of the Alcott family patriarch, Amos Bronson Alcott, whom she profiled under the title "Orpheus at the Plough", in the 10 January 2005 issue of The New Yorker, a month before March was published. The parallel novel received a mixed reaction from critics, but was nonetheless selected in December 2005 by the Washington Post as one of the five best fiction works published that year, and in April 2006, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.[7] She was eligible for the prize by virtue of her American citizenship, and was the first Australian to win the prize.
In her next novel, People of the Book (2008), Brooks explored a fictionalized history of the Sarajevo Haggadah. This novel was inspired by her reporting (for The New Yorker) of human interest stories emerging in the aftermath of the 1991–95 breakup of Yugoslavia.[8] The novel won both the Australian Book of the Year Award and the Australian Literary Fiction Award in 2008.[9]
Her 2011 novel Caleb's Crossing is inspired by the life of Caleb Cheeshahteaumauk, a Wampanoag convert to Christianity who was the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College, in the seventeenth century.[10]
Brooks, at the invitation of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, delivered the 2011 series of the prestigious Boyer Lectures. These have been published as "The Idea of Home",[11] and reveal her passionate humanist values.
In 2016, Brooks visited Israel, as part of a project by the "Breaking the Silence" organization, to write an article for a book on the Israeli occupation, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War.[14][15] The book was edited by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, and was published under the title Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation, in June 2017.[16]
Horse (2022) is a historical novel based upon the racing horse Lexington. It quickly became a New York Times Best Seller.[17] It won the 2023 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction.[18]
Recognition
1996: Overseas Press Club Award for best coverage of the Gulf War.[19]
Brooks, Geraldine (1997). Foreign Correspondence: A Pen Pal's Journey from Down Under to All Over. Anchor Books/Doubleday. ISBN9780385482691.
Brooks, Geraldine (2011). Boyer Lectures 2011: The Idea of Home (or "At Home in the World"). ABC Books. ISBN9780733330254.
Personal life
While retaining her Australian citizenship, Brooks became a United States citizen in 2002.[24][25] She has two sons with husband Tony Horwitz, Nathaniel and Bizu. Tony died suddenly in 2019 while on a book tour.
