Hassan, the “storyteller” of Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya’s … novel, is more than just a narrator: he is a guide, a witness, a showman, a chronicler of Moroccan legend and lore.
His stage is the central square of Marrakesh, Djemaa el Fna, where the myriad wonders of this great, red-walled city surround and inspire him. …
On this particular night, however, Hassan is concerned with only one mystery: the story of a foreign couple, a beautiful French-American woman and her Indian partner, who vanished from the square one evening a few years earlier. …
I read the book in Morocco, enjoying the hectic main square each evening.
This is an ambitious book. A modern “Thousand and One Nights”. But I can’t say the mystical style worked for me. It has mixed reviews on GoodReads.
The author is from India. But he did a good job of giving the rest of us foreigners a bit of the flavour of the nation.
Here is one of the last real storytellers. I didn’t see any in the square itself. It’s too noisy in 2018.
