The Storyteller of Marrakesh

By Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya
(W. W. Norton & Company, Hardcover, 9780393070583, 341pp.)

Publication Date: January 2011

Other Editions of This Title: Google eBook, Paperback, Compact Disc, Paperback, Paperback

Categories: Literary

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Selected by Indie Booksellers for the February 2011 Indie Next List
“Come sit around the circle as master storyteller Hassan beguiles his audience with the tale of two beautiful strangers who enchanted Marrakesh for a day - a day that left his brother Mustafa jailed for their murder. As Hassan draws you into his story, he turns the telling over to audience members, each of whom remembers something different about the strangers and that fateful day. Magical!”
-- Deon Stonehouse, Sunriver Books, Sunriver, OR


Description
Each year, the storyteller, Hassan, gathers listeners to the city square to share their recollections of a young, foreign couple who mysteriously disappeared years earlier. As various witnesses describe their encounters with the couple--their tales overlapping, confirming, and contradicting each other--Hassan hopes to light upon details that will explain what happened to them, and to absolve his own brother, who is in prison for their disappearance.As testimonies circle an elusive truth, the couple takes on an air as enigmatic as their fate. But is this annual storytelling ritual a genuine attempt to uncover the truth, or is it intended instead to weave an ambiguous mythology around a crime?The first in an ambitious cycle of novels set in the Islamic world, The Storyteller of Marrakesh is an elegant exploration of the nature of reality and our shifting perceptions of truth.
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