As Hassan Najmi's acclaimed novel begins, our unnamed narrator befriends
an elderly man, Muhammad, who, as a young man, worked as a tour guide in
the city of Tangier. Muhammad tells the narrator about his most famous
clients, the renowned Gertrude Stein and her companion Alice Toklas,
who--on the recommendation of Henri Matisse--hired Muhammad as their
guide when they visited Morocco. Now close to death, Muhammad begs the
narrator to take his papers and write his life story. We learn that
Muhammad accepted Stein's invitation to visit her in Paris. He
participated in Stein's famous salon, meeting the many luminaries in
Stein's circle. As the narrator is drawn into Muhammad's story, he finds
himself also drawn to a beautiful African-American woman who becomes as
interested in the story of Stein's visit to Morocco as she is in the
young Moroccan who is researching it. Together they continue their quest
into the past to rediscover Stein, in a novel that bursts with different
varieties of passion at the hands of a master storyteller and poet.