FICTION

The African Shore

by Rodrigo Rey Rosa
Yale Univ. (Margellos World Republic of Letters). Oct. 2013. 160p. tr. from Spanish by Jeffrey Gray. ISBN 9780300196108. pap. $13. F
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After a night of carousing, an unnamed Colombian tourist in Morocco loses his passport. His friends return to Cali while the protagonist wanders through Tangiers enjoying life in an aimless manner. A second strand of this short enigmatic novel follows a young Moroccan shepherd, who becomes ill and is cared for by his grandmother. The two stories seem to have no relationship to each other with the exception of an owl with a broken wing that both the tourist and the shepherd care for at different times. Only in the last few pages does everything suddenly come together in a stunning climax.
VERDICT Paul Bowles, who was an expatriate in Morocco for 52 years, mentored Rey Rosa, and this novel draws on Bowles's masterpiece of expat literature The Sheltering Sky. The astonishing manner in which Rey Rosa weaves the various threads of the story into an amazing whole is brilliant. This is not an easy book, but lovers of beautiful, challenging novellas such as those of Jorges Luis Borges or Italo Calvino will definitely enjoy it.
Reviewed by Andrea Kempf, formerly with Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS , Sep 01, 2013
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