Maybe it was a fit of madness, but on just our second visit to the old Moroccan capital of Fez, my husband Sandy McCutcheon and I decided to buy a house there - as one does in a foreign country where you can't speak the language and have virtually nothing in common with the locals.
So begins Suzanna's latest book -A House in Fez - the design and lay out of the book are superb and Viking have gone to town on the beautiful paper and 64 pages of photographs. The first reviews are glowing.
Here is an edited extract: A House in Fez
The collector's edition of the book is available from Australia and is a hardback. The UK and USA editions will be in paperback with only half the number of photographs. Interestingly, we discovered an advertisement on the web for the UK edition with a strange cover.
The very strange UK cover which will be changed before publication!
The "real" coverTags: Moroccan Morocco Fes, Maghreb news
1 comment:
Hi Sandy, finally, got the book (Aus version) from Boffins Bookshop in Perth ... and quickly found myself transported to Fez, and I could not put down the book until the early hours of this morning, when the sleep command took over me.
As a reader until Chapter 9, my impression of buying a riad in a foreign culture felt like taking a plunge into darkness.
Perhaps, it helped when there is a language barrier, the ignorance of red-tape and not realising a lot of unknowns, such as dealing with the surrounding poverty or realising the difference in beliefs and values, and most of all, not knowing the hazzle of dealing with people steep in the art of haggling prices since the Silk Route seems daunting.
I felt the connection about the pettiness that led to mentioning about the "hairdryer" whineing in the hotel and about guilt of not paying enough for something because we can "afford" to pay more. (I have lost out in getting my own property to higher bidders from the eastern states and Asia.)
And I believe that removing a yellow towel from a rich owner's house will not be noticable to them, but it will meant a lot to someone with little material wealth, esp someone who lost a job. But, it is a vicious cycle, we want to help, but human temptation takes over, and soon, temptation leads to greed, esp if we can justified that the theft from the rich is okay, like in Robin Hood. So in the end, we cannot help.
Can't wait to continue reading this evening, with my sugarless mint tea beside me.
(Excuse my non-native English)
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