Imprint: Arcadia
Format: B Format
ISBN: 978-1-906413-33-0
Price: £ 7.99
Pages: 272 pp
Date: February 2009
‘Lyrical and magical’
Matt Bates, Fiction Buyer for WHS Travel
‘In his latest novel, Leaving Tangier, a heterosexual Moroccan has an affair with a gay Spanish man to gain a visa, but underestimates the toll on his sexuality and sense of self. “The question is, what are you ready to do to overcome poverty?” says Ben Jelloun’
Maya Jaggi, Guardian
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Leaving Tangier
Tahar Ben Jelloun (About this author)
Translated from the French by Linda Coverdale
Leaving Tangier, in the early 1990s: young Moroccans gather regularly in a seafront café to gaze at the lights on the Spanish coast glimmering in the distance.
Facing a future with few prospects in a country they feel has failed them, their disillusionment is matched only by their desire to reach this paradise – so close and yet so far… not least because of the treacherous waters separating the two countries and the frightening stories they hear of the fates of would-be illegal emigrants.
Azel, the protagonist, is intent upon leaving one way or another. On the brink of despair he meets Miguel, a wealthy Spanish gallery-owner, who promises to take him to Barcelona if Azel will become his lover. Seeing no other solution, and although he has a girlfriend to whom he is promised, Azel agrees to Miguel’s proposition and thus begins a different kind of hell for the young Moroccan – shame and self-disgust at his own helplessness gradually overcome him and he finds himself once more in a hopeless situation. Azel and others like him, including his sister, begin to wonder if the reality of life in Europe will live up to their dreams.
More Books by this Author:
A Palace in the Old Village
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