A Morocco Anthology - Book Review of a Volume of Moroccan Travel Writing

Here is a piece from the National that reviews a recent publication on travel writing about Morocco, A Morocco Anthology, which is edited by Martin Rose .
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Book review: A Morocco Anthology: Travel Writing through the Centuries

 by Lucy Scholes

Ali Bey el Abbassi was a Spaniard from Barcelona, born in 1767, who claimed he was a descendant of the Abbasid caliphs. He made his name as an explorer and spy in the Islamic world, ­travelling and behaving in every way as a Muslim, who visited Morocco between 1803 and 1805. Although he was apparently ultimately denied Muslim burial when he passed away in Damascus in 1818 because a cross was found on his person.

On 23rd June, 1803, he crossed the Strait of Gibraltar – a mere fourteen miles, ­Martin Rose, A Morocco Anthology’s editor, points out, but in every other way a gulf between two completely different worlds.

El Abbassi sailed into Tangier, “the gateway” of Morocco for Europeans in the era before air travel. Rose describes it as a “strange and perhaps unique place,” one that for 23 years in the late seventeenth century was actually in the possession of the English crown, having been part of Catherine of Braganza’s dowry when she married the English monarch Charles II in 1661.
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10 books based in Tangier

Here is a piece from the Guardian on 10 books based in Tangier, Morocco. Of course no list is definitive, and when you're looking at English langauge literature on the city you're going to have an over representation of Paul Bowles, but its nice to have suggestions. Also, what about  The Alchemist?

credit:logopop

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Mark Twain. Edith Wharton. Patricia Highsmith. The Beats. At one time or another, these literary figures passed through Tangier, and were inspired by the places they saw and people they met. Then there is the wealth of great writers born there: traveller Ibn Battutah, storyteller Driss ben Hamed Charhadi, writer Mohamed Choukri.

Despite this literary link, finding stories set in Tangier is a difficult feat, particularly ones by Arabic writers. The problem lies in language; in Morocco, which language you decide to write in – Arabic or French – is crucial, and while some work will eventually be translated into English, this is not always the case. There also appears to be fewer women writing about Tangier – my list features an almost exclusively male perspective of the city. There are, in fact, female Moroccan writers: Fatema Mernissi, an Arab Islamic feminist whose most well-known work was Beyond the Veil; Leila Abouzeid, whose novella Year of the Elephant was the first work by a Moroccan woman to be translated from Arabic to English; and Leïla Slimani, a Franco-Moroccan writer who won the Prix Goncourt for her novel Lullaby.
Here is my selection of books by authors from Tangier, who passed through, or who even adopted the city as their home.

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