if you wonder what are the best books about morocco or what are the best books to discover moroccan culture, look no further. In this list you will discover some of the best novels set in Morocco…
One of the realities of travel is the long train and bus rides that will test both your bladder and your patience from time to time. So grab a book and get comfortable, we’re going to Morocco.
You are reading: Books set in morocco
one of the best ways to visit a country (besides visiting it) is to delve into the literature it has given birth to… and as I am well known, I have a book in my hands at all times during the last two of decades…
I decided to gather the best gems I found while living and reading about Morocco.
These are some of the best books about Morocco.
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1. hope and other dangerous activities – laila lalami
narrated from the point of view of a group of survivors of an illegal attempt to cross the strait of gibraltar and enter spain through a rubber lifeboat. some escaped to Spain and others did not.
this takes four of them and tells you about their lives before the crossover; What was it that made them risk their lives to move to an unknown society, where they imagined that everything would be better?
Told in stripped-back narrative prose, it is as relevant today as it was a decade ago, a penetrating examination of immigration and perception.
2. the voices of marrakech – elias canetti
a strange and beautiful delight of a novella. writing filled to the brim with penetrating curiosity, keen observations, insights, and musings about “everyday” encounters in Marrakech during this Nobel Laureate’s several-week visit.
a collection of short stories that I was sad to leave when I was done.
elias has one of the most humane, graceful, and unassuming writing voices I’ve ever met, and as you travel with him briefly through the alleys, streets, souks, shrines, beggars, merchants, and denizens of Marrakech, you’ll see to a wonderful narrator who strips shreds of the soul of the city and his own.
3. naked lunch – william burroughs
I hesitated to put this book on the list, as it is such a depraved tangle of sentences, paragraphs, characters, and emotions that once you enter, you emerge later as if from a twisted maze, blinking in shock as you see the sun go on. shining.
although it was written while the author was living in tangier, there is not much plot to speak of; it’s more of an avalanche of shocking, experimental writing intended to convey a spirit of paranoia, aggression, disturbing sexuality of the pedophile variety, and decadent use of hard drugs…many of which have existed in the city at one time or another. /p>
the tangier that is buried like a hastily rotting corpse in this book doesn’t exist these days, most likely most of it existed only in his mind, but you can still smell the stale fear, urine, the paranoia and aggression that raises its fangs here on some streets on the right, or wrong night.
reading tip: the most beautiful places in morocco in pictures
4. the sheltering sky – paul bowles
a masterpiece of tense, sparse, clean and beautiful writing.
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bowles lived in morocco for most of his life, and his accounts of the country, its politics, cultural nuances and lifestyle, particularly when immersed in and confronted by a westerner with its unfamiliarity, are fascinating and illuminating. .
This is a fictional tale set in the late 1940s about a husband, wife, and one of their acquaintances who follow a urge to explore that leads to disaster and ruin.
I won’t spoil the arc, but like some of bowles’ other pieces, it covers the fierce terror and exhilaration of traveling deep into a “wild” country without a safety net, how it can erode sanity and take the traveler Farther into realms they never imagined finding.
5. only for bread – mohamed choukri
classic. a haunting biographical look through the eyes of extremely impoverished Moroccan life in tangier.
said in simple and powerful language that describes truths with a direct force that remains in your mind. This book will open your eyes to some of the harsh realities of life in the Moroccan underclass, in any developing country.
6. a street in marrakech – elizabeth warnock fernea
reads like a slightly enlarged personal diary told in almost academic prose, an attention to detail that slowly reveals great complexity, the kind of writing in which books are no longer written.
A couple of anthropologists move into a house in the old medina, or old city of marrakesh for a year with their two young children, around 1972.
What follows is a hyper-realistic and intriguing account of the slow integration into everyday life, its various social trials, struggles, miscommunications, celebrations, stubbornness and surprise.
An illuminating account, all the more so as it provides a unique, albeit brief, glimpse into Moroccan women’s society.
reading advice: the complete guide to the city of marrakech, the red city of morocco
7. the spider house – paul bowles
set in fez in 1954 during the nationalist uprising in morocco, published in 1955, and 1956 was the year morocco declared its independence from the french protectorate.
yes bowles is here twice, covering some of the same topics, however the story told in the spider house rings with much more foreknowledge and relevance today, not to mention its timing in an event thread .
Told from the point of view of a devout Muslim boy, an American expat who lived in and loves North Africa of the past, and an American tourist who exemplifies every cliché you can think of.
It is a clash of ideologies in a city of increasing violence where each of the characters begins to think differently. strangely reminiscent of current currents of conflict between east and west today.
8. gravity according to birds – leo skala
Of course, I’m biased, I wrote it. this is a magical realist novel based on my own experiences of first arriving in tangier, planning to stay for a single day with only a hundred dollars to my name, and somehow ending up hitchhiking across the country and living in tangier for several years.
To see the impressions and see what other readers have said about it, visit take high ground.
9. the holy night – tahar ben jelloun
sequel to the sandboy, a mind-blowing masterpiece of surreal and terrifying secrets, guilt, and potent varieties of shame. you meet zahra, a young moroccan woman who discovers her femininity.
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zahra was born the eighth of eight daughters, endured various ‘circumcision’ rituals and passed away as a child until her father’s death on the night of the 27th of ramadan, the holy night, the night of destiny, just after that he has for the first time recognized his daughter as just that.
A story of strange and doomed destinies, how they become entangled and what each member clings to in order to cope.
10. the house of the caliph – tahir shah
tahir shah decides to move his wife and three children from their boring life in london to an old, dilapidated and haunted mansion in the outskirts of casablanca. Dar Kalifa, the house of the Caliph.
is a light-hearted, often amusing story revolving around three Moroccan guardians who have come “in a kind of medieval transaction” with the house, the rigors of remodeling amid accepted social corruption, the belief that there is a horde of djinn, or malicious evil spirits living in dar khalifa, and the shah’s ironic position of being essentially a rationalistically minded western foreigner raised in england, while at the same time, in fact, being a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad through his Afghan family line. .
very easy to read with sometimes awkward writing, but an absolutely wonderful story that highlights a clash and reconciliation of cultures in a magical light.
reading advice: the 11 most inspiring travel novels
out of Africa – isak dinesen (karen blixen)
bonus. It has nothing to do with Morocco, but I thought that while we were in the general vicinity of Africa, we might as well visit Baronness Blixen at her coffee plantation in Kenya.
blixen wrote this in the 1930s under the pseudonym isak dinesen to hide her gender, and many readers were surprised to learn that she was female.
This is his account of owning and working a coffee plantation for ten years with the local tribesman called the Kikuyu in the hills outside Nairobi.
such a surprising, kind and fascinating story that will strangely enrich you while exposing the hopes, the dreams, the rhythms, the wonders, the sorrows, the realities and the harsh beauties of this decade.
justine – lawrence durell
bonus again! this time we are going to alexandria, egypt in the 1930s in the first installment of the alexandria quartet.
a series of four books told during the same timeline around a cast of characters, each book containing one of their voices, visualizations, and versions of the same set of events.
a riveting meditation on art and life’s varieties of love, despair, regret and hilarity told in elegantly muscular prose, punctuated with beautiful and terrible visions.
about the author
This list of the best books set in Morocco was written by Leo Skala. leo is a multidisciplinary artist and traveler whose main focus is the word. written word, oral narration, musical phrases, chants and djembe drumming.
author of a book of poems and a novel, if he’s not taking walks in nature, doing yoga, or making music, he can be found writing on one project or another, studying a language, nestled between the pages of a book, dancing or setting up a typewriter on a public street to write impromptu poems for passing strangers.
for amazing stories about his world travels, visit his blog the sounding lines.
Any book about Morocco that you recommend? let us know in the comments below!
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