A Moroccan Trilogy: Marrakesh, Rabat and Fez - Jérôme and Jean Tharaud
A Moroccan Trilogy: Marrakesh, Rabat and Fez - Jérôme and Jean Tharaud
Translated by Anthony Gladstone-Thompson
From 1917–19, the Tharaud brothers immersed themselves in Morocco while observing the determined imposition of the French Protectorate at first hand. With unique access to both colonial manoeuvres and a now-vanished Moroccan way of life, they settled for periods in Marrakesh, Rabat and Fez to absorb and observe. We join them on visits to the Sultan one day and to the shrine of Sidi Ben Achir – part shrine, part mental asylum – on another. They watch the son and heir of the Glaoui dynasty die from wounds received in a mountain battle, and lovers weaving and ducking across the rooftops of Fez to reach their trysting place.
This is the first translation of these vivacious works into English, giving access to the majesty, the squalor and above all the liveliness of this extraordinary period of Moroccan history.
‘… a highly poetic gift for showing what might be invisible to the rest of us ...’ Léon Bérard
‘A Moroccan Trilogy is a model of the genre … an eye of conscience for all of France.’ Roland Lebel
A Moroccan Trilogy
ISBN: 978-178060-162-5
Format: 320pp demi pb
Place: Morocco,Marrakesh,Rabat,Fez
Author Biography
Jérôme and Jean Tharaud wrote as a single literary entity (J J Tharaud) like the Goncourt brothers before them. They travelled and composed their books together in a seamless pattern, reading each other’s initial observations in notebooks, writing first drafts and then working up and editing the texts by turn. They made their name exposing the imperialist agenda behind Rudyard Kipling’s writings in the novel, Dingley. The Moroccan trilogy is saluted as ‘the most memorable of all their books.’ They were both members of the French Academy and were considered part of the ‘Academy of Dissidence’ opposed to the Vichy regime in the Second World War.