The first guide to Tangier's extraordinary cultural history.
In Tangier, the Moroccan novelist Mohamed Choukri wrote, everything is
surreal and everything is possible. In this intimate portrait of a city,
the former BBC North Africa correspondent, Richard Hamilton, explores
its hotels, cafés, alleyways and darkest secrets to find out what it is
that has inspired so many international writers, artists and musicians.
Delving down through complex historical layers, he finds a frontier town
that is comic, confounding and haunted by the ghosts of its past. Samuel
Pepys thought God should destroy Tangier and St Francis of Assisi called
it a city of 'madness and delusions.' Yet, throughout the centuries, it
has also been a crucible of creativity. It was a turning point in Henri
Matisse's artistic journey and had a profound impact on the founder of
the Rolling Stones, Brian Jones. Tangier also produced two of the
greatest American novels of the twentieth century: The Sheltering
Skyand Naked Lunch. Besides Paul Bowles and William Burroughs, the
book also looks at lesser known characters such as the flawed genius,
Brion Gysin, as well as Ibn Battuta, who traveled three times further
than Marco Polo.
Featuring a thrilling cast of pirates, sultans, artists, musicians,
writers, princes and playboys, this is an essential read about Tangier.
