Won ARC from Firstreads.

I'm not sure if this was a love story, a mystery, or a book about Marakesh, and I'm not sure I care. The descriptions of places, times of day, and people really made the story come alive to me. I felt like I was part of the circle listening to the stories everyone was telling and trying to piece the events of one night together. I will definitely read more by this author and am excited that this is the start of a cycle of books.

I liked, but I didn't think I would. It took easily 100 pages for this to gain momentum. The story is told from constantly changing, overlapping points of view, which slowed the pace considerably in the first third. Additionally, it started to feel a bit like an 80s TV show, with constant "guest stars" popping up with their own story lines. Once the author settled down a bit and let the narrator take over most of the tale, it moved quickly. Overall, very atmospheric, enjoyable, tension-filled, and culturally enlightening. ( )

In order to live, a story requires a teller and an audience. In the case of Hassan, the storyteller of the Djemaa el Fna, the central square of the fabled city of Marrakesh, he involves his entire audience in the recreation of the night two foreign visitors disappeared from that very square, involving Hassan’s brother, Mustafa – a man who has sworn to pursue beauty no matter the cost, in the crime that seems to surround the incident.

We often hear that stories are the means we have invented for exploring and finding life’s truths, but in this case we see that the story’s truth may be a compilation of everyone’s lies. Roy-Bhattacharya gives us an enigmatic tale, richly symbolic, and overflowing with the exotic variety of the inhabitants of northwest Africa.

The mysterious young couple are so thoroughly described by the various eye-witnesses to the events of that night that they become ironically unknowable except, perhaps, as symbols of Truth and Beauty much as the Djemma becomes a symbol and an unknowable entity in its function as a nexus or navel of the world.

India’s Roy-Bhattacharya creates a modern Arabesque reminiscent of "A Thousand and One Nights" in this compilation of vignettes around a central themes of what is truth and the unreliability of memory. This story about storytelling is a memorable book that will, no doubt, resonate within me for a long time. ( )

What is beauty? What is love? What is truth? What is reality? The stories in this book weave together like threads on a killim posing these philosophical questions, while at the same time becoming an overall mystery story. The language of the narrator is both beautiful and evocative, at times poetic. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, gaining insights into a culture I know little about and into the art of story telling. ( )

Hassan is a traditional storyteller in the Jemaa el Fna, a large public square in Marrakesh where there are souks and performers. Each year, he tells the story of two foreigners, a man and a woman traveling together, who appeared there two years prior. At the start, he explains that he is doing so to try to discover what happened to them, so he can help his brother who is in prison for a crime committed against one or both of the strangers, a crime that he is sure his brother is innocent of. The woman possessed great beauty that entranced all who saw her. That night in the Jemaa, while listening to a musical, drumming group, the woman, or both she and the man, were abducted or otherwise disappeared. Hassan and others in the audience who were there that day tell the story of what they know about the strangers, and these accounts often conflict, Rashamon fashion. Along with this main story, we also learn about Hassan's family history, the elusive nature of truth, and the meaning of beauty and love.
This is another book that I enjoyed in part because it immerses the reader in a foreign culture. ( )