Leaving Tangier
ABOUT
THE BOOK
Tangier, in the early 1990s: young Moroccans gather regularly in a seafront café to gaze at the lights on the Spanish coast glimmering in the distance. Facing a future with few prospects in a country they feel has failed them, their disillusionment is matched only by their desire to reach this paradise.
Azel, the protagonist, is intent upon leaving. At the brink of despair he meets Miguel, a wealthy Spanish gallery-owner, who promises to take him to Barcelona if Azel will become his lover. Seeing no other solution, and although he has a girlfriend to whom he is promised, Azel agrees to Miguel’s proposition and thus begins a different kind of hell for the young Moroccan.
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Linda
Coverdale
Linda Coverdale is a literary translator from French. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, and has a Ph.D in French Literature. She has translated into English more than 60 works by such authors as Roland Barthes, Emmanuel Carrère, Patrick Chamoiseau, Maryse Condé, Marie Darrieussecq, Jean Echenoz, Annie Ernaux, Sébastien Japrisot, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Philippe Labro, Yann Queffélec, Jorge Semprún, Lyonel Trouillot, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Jean Hartzfeld, Sylvain Tesson and Marguerite Duras.
Linda Coverdale is a literary translator from French. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, and has a Ph.D in French Literature. She has translated into English more than 60 works by such authors as Roland Barthes, Emmanuel Carrère, Patrick Chamoiseau, Maryse Condé, Marie Darrieussecq, Jean Echenoz, Annie Ernaux, Sébastien Japrisot, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Philippe Labro, Yann Queffélec, Jorge Semprún, Lyonel Trouillot, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Jean Hartzfeld, Sylvain Tesson and Marguerite Duras.
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
A short but ambitious novel about those “on the margins of society”. A breakthrough novel about leaving home for a better life. This harsh, unsentimental view of the risks of emigration is a stark, straightforward life that readers can’t help getting caught up in.