Marrakech in Literature (2)

The inspiration given by the fascinating Moroccan city of Marrakech, on the Jemaa el Fna, its religious and social tensions and countless picturesque street scenes and has produced countless works of literature and thought. Here's a new list of five of these works, whose stories, thoughts and adventures revolve around Marrakech, the Ochre City: 1. Marrakech - George Orwell (Motihari, India 1903 - London, England 1950) The famous English author George Orwell spent the winter of 1938-39 in Marrakech and its bequeathed a brief essay marraquechí experience, severe and lucid, which is named of the city. His descriptions are vivid and are full of reflections on par highly critical, and nearly human. This essay is an eloquent portrait of the colonial situation of the Moroccan city in the 30's, where the Jewish population, Arabs and sub-Saharan appear invisible to the indifferent, frivolous and blinded European look. 2. The shocking - Touria Oulehri This novel, recently published, tells the moral odyssey Niran, a woman still young, modern, rejected by her husband for not being able to give a child. After more than fifteen years of marriage, family and social pressure, whose archaic rules consider a disgrace not being able to father children, make her husband leave Niran decide to marry a rich young woman.

Thus, Niran will of the conservative and unforgiving Fez to Casablanca, more liberal and lenient, which will perform a rediscovery of self and a desire to start again which will lead ultimately to an Marrakech, where reunited with the expected Niran love. In short, this novel tells gives us a close and realistic vision of the phenomenon of divorce in Morocco, while it reveals the complexity of the cultural tensions between modernity and tradition, Moroccan women suffer today.

3. The quartet of Marrakech - Alberto Ciaurriz (Pamplona, ​​Spain 1947) This novel is uniquely told from the perspective of its four protagonists homer, Moroccan Mohammed and adidas and Spanish Juan Carlos and Paco. The Moroccan couple found again after a separation holiday that highlights their different experiences and perspectives on life. His encounter with a Spanish couple, summer residence in Marrakech, uncovers the complexity of human relationships and cultural distances, with its eroticism and disappointments, anger, love, lust, envy, innocence and loss, all told respectively from the inner horizon of each of the characters. 4. The Thousand and One Nights of Djemaa el Fna - Juan Goytisolo (Barcelona, ​​Spain 1931) The Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo has written numerous dicado the city of Marrakech, which usually resides. One of these writings, the article "The Thousand and One Nights of Djemaa el Fna? is particularly relevant, since that has become the banner of the struggle to preserve the oral heritage of this universal square. In it, Goytisolo reflects on the relationship between oral and written literature, the central concepts of the simultaneous presence and complicity of the former against the rigidity of the second.

The square, "only place on earth where every day of the year musicians, storytellers, dancers, minstrels and bards act before large crowds and ceaselessly renewed?, Is an area of ​​contact and communication unique and unrepeatable, crucible of cultures that invites conviviality. 5. The Sand Child - Tahar Ben Jelloun (Fez, 1944) The Sand Child is a story of cross-dressing and raw desperation inspired by an actual event. Hadj Ahmed is a man who desperately wants a son, but denies life. Upon learning that his last descendant is also a girl, decides to concoct a sham: to convince everyone that his daughter Zahra is a male, who called Ahmed and educated as a boy. This novel tells the abortion of the femininity of Zahra, his exploration of male privilege forbidden to women, the search for identity and impossible alienated and ultimately, his rebellious and perverse decision to continue the charade of his father taking a woman in marriage, capping a dizzying descent into hell of the social lie insane.

I invite you, from the heart of the city beyond, to come and discover the magic and charm of the Ochre City. For even more inevitable seduction of this place can stay in one of the hotels in Marrakech, in the modern and unusual Gueliz neighborhood, or better yet, in one of Marrakech riads, so seductively close to the square Jemaa el Fna, the continent's largest and undoubtedly the most exciting and inspiring the world.