An English travel writer and author of Sorcerer's Apprentice describes his and his family's experiences after purchasing a rundown palace in the Moroccan city of Casablanca, as they work to renovate the house, exorcise the jinns--mischievous invisible spirits--haunting the structure, and cope with the house's human guardians.

In this extraordinary non-fiction novel, based on a true story, Tahar Ben Jelloun traces the experiences of Salim who, in 1971, took part in a failed coup attempt to oust King Hassan II of Morocco. With sixty others Salim was incarcerated in a secret prison complex in the Moroccan desert: he was to remain there for nearly twenty years.

Fez, 1954, and American ex-pat Stenham reluctantly accepts a guide for his night-time walk home through the streets of the Medina. Bowles's most masterly novel combines his classic themes: the conflict of Eastern and Western cultures and the trials of otherness.

Driven by famine from their home in the Rif, Mohamed's family walks to Tangiers in search of a better life. But things are no better there. Eight of Mohamed's siblings die of malnutrition and neglect, and one is killed by Mohamed's father in a fit of rage. On moving to another province Mohamed learns how to charm and steal, and discovers the joys of drugs, sex and alcohol.

The novella and eight short stories that constitute Year of the Elephant-an allusion to a battle described in the Qur'an-serve as an eloquent representation of life in the wake of Morocco's successful struggle for independence from French occupation.When published in English in 1989, Year of the Elephant was the first novel by a Moroccan woman to be translated from Arabic into English.

Thirty-four-year-old prostitute Jmiaa reflects on the bustling world around her with honesty and wit. Jmiaa struggles to earn enough money to support herself and her family. While she doesn't despair about her profession like her roommate Halima, she still has to maintain a delicate balance between her reality and the 'respectable' one she paints for her own more conservative mother.