Morocco is gaining in popularity as a backdrop for fiction. One of the latest additions for your Moroccan bookshelf is Lulu in Marrakech by Diane Johnson.
The narrator of Lulu in Marrakech, Diane Johnson's rather shallow, new confection of a novel, is a very unlikely CIA spy on assignment as an undercover agent in Morocco. The pretty Lulu is supposed to be collecting " humint - human intelligence" on Muslim terrorist networks and what better way than to infiltrate the affluent expat culture and listening to gossip over alcohol-soaked alfresco lunches. Oh really? Just the place you would find Al-Qaeda - not.
With a stock cast of characters who spend their time flirting, making love, talking to and constantly about each other there seems little need of a meaningful plot but Diane Johnson attempts to insert one and comes up with an unbelievable tale of dear sweet Lulu's role in the abduction of a terrorist suspect. Plausible? No, but then I suspect this book was never intended to be anything other than light and fluffy. At the end of the day spooks like Lulu probably deserve a change of occupation.
Tags: Moroccan Morocco Fes, Maghreb news
2 comments:
I’m an American who has lived in Marrakech for nearly 30 years and after reading this book, I’m wondering what Marrakech the author is talking about? She passes off a mish-mash of foods, traditions, names and clothing from other parts of the Islamic world that have nothing to do with Morocco. There are so many factual errors—there’s no Moroccan dish called poulet au poivres rouges no raisins in a pigeon pastilla, and no goats in the trees on the Casablanca road, to name a few—that I couldn’t help wondering if the author was going to set her spy story in Marrakech, why on earth didn’t she take the trouble to get the details right? There are also so many inaccuracies in her descriptions of the relations between Muslims and Christians that it would seem to add even more fuel to the fire of misunderstandings that already exist between us and the Islamic world.
I’m an American who has lived in Marrakech for nearly 30 years and after reading this book, I’m wondering what Marrakech the author is talking about? She passes off a mish-mash of foods, traditions, names and clothing from other parts of the Islamic world that have nothing to do with Morocco. There are so many factual errors—there’s no Moroccan dish called poulet au poivres rouges no raisins in a pigeon pastilla, and no goats in the trees on the Casablanca road, to name a few—that I couldn’t help wondering if the author was going to set her spy story in Marrakech, why on earth didn’t she take the trouble to get the details right? There are also so many inaccuracies in her descriptions of the relations between Muslims and Christians that it would seem to add even more fuel to the fire of misunderstandings that already exist between us and the Islamic world.
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