Description
Book SynopsisIt's spring 1990 in a dingy small-town Moroccan bar. Zina is serving drinks when a mysterious man approaches her. The man gives Zina a handwritten note from her husband, Aziz, who disappeared the day after their wedding, eighteen years ago, after participating in the failed 1972 coup against King Hassan II. Zina has spent the past eighteen years searching for Aziz, who has been imprisoned in inhuman conditions in a solitary cell inside a secret desert jail. Will Zina finally find Aziz? Moving back and forth between 1990 and the past, A Rare Blue Bird That Flies with Me recounts the painful circumstances that brought Zina and Aziz together and the torture after the 1972 coup that tore them apart. Told from the perspective of several narrators-including Zina, Aziz, Aziz's two jailors-Youssef Fadel's novel is a masterful history of modern Morocco.
Trade Review"A masterful history of modern Morocco."--BookShy Blog
"[Fadel is] a valued asset of modern Moroccan literature."--Aujourd'hui le Maroc
"Events progress rapidly and with the acute tension of a detective novel"--Leah Caldwell, The National
"Fadel's daring account of modern Morocco widens the periphery of the English reader on a subject that is better known in Arabic and French."--Sherif Dhaimish, Qantara.de
"A Rare Blue Bird Flies With Me reads like a taut and claustrophobic detective story."--Literary Hub
"Fadel's novel brings out the importance of seeing one's place even in the darkest of times."--Wawa Book Review
