Tangier: A Literary Guide for Travellers

An edge city, poised at the northernmost tip of Africa but just nine miles from Europe, Tangier is more than a destination, it is an escape. The Interzone, as William Burroughs called it, has attracted spies, outlaws, outcasts and writers for centuries - men and women breaking through artistic borders. The results were some of the most incendiary and influential books of our time and the list of outlaw originals is long, stretching from Ibn Battuta and Alexandre Dumas to Twain and Wharton and from the darkly brilliant Beats of Bowles, Kerouac, Gysin and Ginsberg to the great Moroccan novelists: Mohamed Choukri, Mohammed Mrabet and Tahar Ben Jelloun.

Josh Shoemake moved to Morocco in 1996 after graduating from Columbia. He spent three years in Tangier, where he taught literature at the American School of Tangier and formed close friendships with Paul Bowles, Mohamed Choukri, and other local artists and writers. He then served for five years as headmaster of The American School of Marrakesh. He lives in Paris.