| ISBN | 9781928433088 |
| Pages | 158 |
| Dimensions | 198 x 129mm |
| Published | 2020 |
| Publisher | Modjaji Books, South Africa |
| Format | Paperback |
In Tangier We Killed the Blue Parrot
by Barbara Adair
In Tangier We Killed the Blue Parrot is a novel set in Morocco in the 1940s and weaves a story around the well-known writers, Paul and Jane Bowles. Paul was a composer and author of The Sheltering Sky, and Jane was the author of Two Serious Ladies. This mesmerising novel draws the reader into the creative, erotic and exiled minds of Paul and Jane Bowles. Their struggles to write and their struggle to love, both each other and others, creates an unusually rich experience for the reader, and one which is hard to forget.
Review
‘A
haunting tale, delicately told. Writerly narcissism, betrayal, moral
confusion, love, lust and loss are the themes developed here in the
context of the historical foray of Jane and Paul Bowles into Morocco. It
… lingers in the mind through the quiet but compelling depictions of
artistic grandiosity, hubris and despair set against a backdrop of power
struggles in dysfunctional relationships and against the weft of
politics and an economy of survival in a developing country. Yet it also
leaves the reader with an overbearing sense of melancholy and sadness
about the (unavoidable?) traps of desire and exoticism that any western
writer confronting any “other” will encounter.’