A Rare Blue Bird Flies with Me - Paperback

by Youssef Fadel (Author), Jonathan Smolin (Translator)

SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR ARABIC FICTION

Spring, 1990. After years of searching in vain, a stranger passes a scrap of paper to Zina. It's from Aziz: the man who vanished the day after their wedding almost two decades ago. It propels Zina on a final quest for a secret desert jail in southern Morocco, where her husband crouches in despair, dreaming of his former life.

Youssef Fadel pays powerful testament to a terrible period in Morocco's history, known as 'the Years of Cinders and Lead, ' and masterfully evokes the suffering inflicted on those who supported the failed coup against King Hassan II in 1972.

Author Biography

Award-winning Moroccan novelist and screenwriter Youssef Fadel was born in Casablanca in 1949. During Morocco's 'Years of Lead' he was imprisoned in the notorious Moulay Cherif prison (1974-75). A Shimmering Red Fish Swims with Me is his tenth novel, and the final part in his modern Morocco series. He lives in Casablanca, Morocco.

Jonathan Smolin is the Jane and Raphael Bernstein Professor in Asian Studies at Dartmouth College in the US. He is the author of Moroccan Noir: Police, Crime, and Politics in Popular Culture (2013), and the translator of several works of Arabic fiction. He lives in Hanover, NH.