From one of the world's great writers, a novel that mirrors the journeys of millions who leave home for a better life In Leaving Tangier , award-winning, internationally bestselling author Tahar Ben Jelloun tells the story of a Moroccan brother and sister making new lives for themselves in Spain. Azel is a young man in Tangier who dreams of crossing the Strait of Gibraltar. When he meets Miguel, a wealthy Spaniard, he leaves behind his girlfriend, his sister, Kenza, and his mother, and moves with him to Barcelona, where Kenza eventually joins them. What they find there forms the heart of this novel of seduction and betrayal, deception and disillusionment, in which Azel and Kenza are reminded powerfully not only of where they've come from, but also of who they really are. Award-winning Jelloun offers a forthright novel illuminating the dreams and harsh realities of emigration. Brother and sister Azel and Kenza are living in Tangier, Morocco. Azel has two degrees but is unable to find work, and spends his evenings at a café from which he can see the lights of Spain. He longs obsessively to emigrate to Europe, convinced that only there will he be successful. When Azel is brutally beaten, Miguel, a wealthy Spaniard, comes to his aid and helps Azel get a visa to Spain on the provision that Azel will become his lover. Azel leaves his family and girlfriend to accompany Miguel to Spain but becomes increasingly disillusioned when he realizes that his new country is not the easy answer to his visions of a better life. Kenza soon joins Azel to pursue her own desires and meets a Turkish man with a dark secret. Jelloun’s compelling characters often fall prey to the shadow side in their quest for a bright future in this frank and authentic tale of hope, risk, and regret. --Leah Strauss "A brave, unflinching look at the issues underlying economic migration from North Africa—and the hard choices people make between roots and wings."  — The Economist   "[A] penetrating tale."  — The New York Times Book Review   "Ben Jelloun is arguably Morocco's greatest living author, whose impressive body of work combines intellect and imagination in magical fusion. . . .  Leaving Tangier is a wholly original feat of form and imagination. . . . There is unexpected humour jostling alongside the horror, in magical-realist passages illuminating the clash of traditional and modern."  — The Guardian   "Artful and compassionate,  Leaving Tangier  evokes a milieu of self-exile and great expectations."  — The Washington Post   "Just as John Updike reminded Americans of the guilt and vertigo they sort out between the sheets, Ben Jelloun has chronicled the shame and secrecy surrounding sex in a Morocco of creeping fundamentalism and diminishing opportunity. The explicitness of the sex in his work is powerful and often beautifully erotic; it's . . . where sex amplifies the degradations of postcolonial economic reality that  Leaving Tangier  lands like a hammer blow. . . .  Leaving Tangier  would read like a blunt political instrument . . . were Ben Jelloun not such a wonderfully specific writer. Many scenes of agonizing depravity convey the desperation of poverty. . . . From such bracing particulars, Ben Jelloun fashions political fiction of great urgency."  —John Freeman,  Bookforum   "Tahar Ben Jelloun lifts the veil on an astounding world of a thousand and one nights." — Le Point "Of the thirty books Tahar Ben Jelloun has written, this is undoubtedly one of the most courageous." — Le Monde des Livres Tahar Ben Jelloun was born in 1944 in Fez, Morocco, and emigrated to France in 1961. A novelist, essayist, critic, and poet, he is a regular contributor to Le Monde , La Republica , El País, and Panorama . His novels include The Sacred Night (winner of the 1987 Prix Goncourt), Corruption , and The Last Friend . Ben Jelloun won the 1994 Prix Maghreb, and in 2004 he won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for This Blinding Absence of Light . From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Dennis Drabelle A t one point in this short but ambitious novel, a character philosophizes about those "on the margins of society," including "an American writer who'd lived [in Tangier] for several years with an illiterate Moroccan boy, while his wife had set up house with a peasant woman." There's irony in that allusion to expat novelists Paul and Jane Bowles, who came to Morocco to find themselves: The same dream impels many of the characters in "Leaving Tangier" to ditch Morocco for Spain. The author himself, Tahar Ben Jelloun, moved from Fez to France in 1961. He seems to know the many ways in which people-smuggling can be done and, more important, how the uprooting affects those who submit to it and those who take them in. The story of Azel, Jelloun's main character, is fairly typical: He has a university degree but no way of parlaying it into a good job. Long praised by his mother as "the handsomes