Tangier: A Literary Guide For Travellers(Literary Guides for Travellers)

An edge city, poised at the northernmost tip of Africa, just nine miles across the Strait of Gibraltar from Europe and overlooking both the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, Tangier is more than a destination, it is an escape, and the Interzone, as William Burroughs called it, has attracted spies, outlaws, outcasts and writers for centuries - men and women working out at the edge of literary forms, breaking through artistic borders. This outlaw originality is what most astonishes when encountering the literary history of Tangier for the first time. Particularly in the past century, the results were some of the most incendiary and influential books of our time, the most prominent being Burroughs' Naked Lunch and Paul Bowles' The Sheltering Sky. The list of "edge" writers who were drawn to Tangier is long, among them Ibn Battuta, Samuel Pepys, Alexandre Dumas, Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, Walter Harris, Jean Genet, Paul and Jane Bowles, Tennessee Williams, William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Patricia Highsmith, Jack Kerouac, Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, Allen Ginsberg, Alfred Chester, Joe Orton, and Mohamed Choukri.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations Map 1.Introduction: The Edge of the Known World 2.The Port 3.Tanger Plage- Malabata 4.The Kasbah 5.The Medina 6.The Petit Socco 7.The Grand Socco 8.Dean's Bar-Hotel Minzah 9.Gran Cafe de Paris-New Town 10.Boulevard Pasteur 11.Hotel Rembrandt-Villa Muniria 12.The Marshan 13.To Merkala Beach 14. The Old Mountain 15.San Francisco- Immeuble Itesa 16.Iberia 17.The New Mountain 18.Cap Spartel-Caves of Hercules-Sidi Kacem 19.Asilah and Larache Author Profiles Chronology Select Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Josh Shoemake read English at Columbia. He has lived in Morocco since 1996. He spent three years in Tangier, where he taught literature and formed close friendships with Paul Bowles, Mohamed Choukri and other local artists and writers. He then served for five years as headmaster of The American School of Marrakech and has published stories about Tangier in The Threepenny Review and elsewhere.

Review :
"Tangier: A Literary Guide for Travellers is a truly dazzling and extraordinary book. A work of literature in its own right, it's the perfect companion for an exotic journey or an armchair afternoon. The kind of book that educates, amuses, and charms with every page, it's one that reveals the magical underbelly of Tangier like nothing else." - Tahir Shah, author of The Caliph's House "Shoemake, who has lived in Morocco since 1996, is a sure-footed guide to the lore and literature of an enigmatic city that has survived its own myth." - Iain Finlayson, The Times