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 Correspondence speaks to the
unquiet heart of every girl who has ever yearned to become a woman of the world.