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The Storyteller of Marrakesh

3.0 of 5 stars 3.00 · rating details · 252 ratings · 80 reviews

Each year, the storyteller, Hassan, gathers listeners to the city square to share their recollections of a young, foreign couple who mysteriously disappeared years earlier. As various witnesses describe their encounters with the couple—their tales overlapping, confirming, and contradicting each other—Hassan hopes to light upon details that will explain...more

Hardcover, 340 pages

Published January 31st 2011 by W. W. Norton & Company (first published January 1st 2011)

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Apr 01, 2012 Jim rated it 4 of 5 stars

Each year, the storyteller, Hassan, gathers listeners to the city square to share their recollections of a young, foreign couple who mysteriously disappeared years earlier. As various witnesses describe their encounters with the couple--their tales overlapping, confirming, and contradicting each other--Hassan hopes to light upon details that will explain what happened to them, and to absolve his own brother, who is in prison for their disappearance. As testimonies circle an elusive truth, the co...more

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Nov 19, 2011 Murdo Morrison rated it 3 of 5 stars

The book has an interesting premise - the central character, Hassan, is a story teller of Berber descent who has come to the main square in the city of Marrakesh in Morocco to practice his art. The story he has chosen to tell relates to the apparent disappearance of a married couple who were visiting the city as tourists several years before. Throughout the long night of story telling the audience joins in, sharing their individual accounts of the events of that disappearance.

The book explores...more

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Jun 09, 2011 Jeruen Dery rated it 5 of 5 stars

An earlier version of this article was first published as Book Review: The Storyteller of Marrakesh by Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya on Blogcritics.org.

This is one sensual piece of work. I initially grabbed this book from the New Releases section of the library, because I was intrigued by the Arabic calligraphy that is featured on the cover, but I ended up just spending 3 days reading this spectacular and magnificent work.

This is a novel that has many facets. First, one can say that this is a novel a...more An earlier version of this article was first published as Book Review: The Storyteller of Marrakesh by Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya on Blogcritics.org.

This is one sensual piece of work. I initially grabbed this book from the New Releases section of the library, because I was intrigued by the Arabic calligraphy that is featured on the cover, but I ended up just spending 3 days reading this spectacular and magnificent work.

This is a novel that has many facets. First, one can say that this is a novel about a storyteller named Hassan, who earns a living by telling stories in the famous Djemaa el Fna, the marketplace and square in Marrakesh that has a life of its own. Hassan's father is also a storyteller, and he has inherited the trade from the family. Hassan has two other brothers, Ahmed, who is a businessman; and Mustafa, who is the enfant terrible. Throughout the novel, Hassan tells the story of two foreigners who went missing.

This is also a novel about the Djemaa el Fna itself. This place is magical, and has a life of its own. While reading the novel, I was amazed by how vivid the descriptions were of the orange sellers, the acrobats, the storytellers, the mosque, and so forth. The author definitely did a good job making the place alive for me, who hasn't been there before.

Thirdly, this is a novel about memory. This book is written in the postmodern style, employing literary tricks such as making use of multiple narrators, multiple perspectives, and metafiction (there are stories embedded within stories: in fact, the title of the novel itself betrays this, as the novel is a story about a storyteller, who tells a story within a story). I especially enjoyed the fact that the narratives somehow contradicted each other. One narrator would give one take on it, and another would claim that the previous narration was a fabrication.

Finally, this novel is about love. Yes, the title might obscure it, but in the end, it is a story about one of the most powerful manifestations of love, as it involves self-sacrifice. In favor of not spoiling the story, I would not give away more details, but I definitely was surprised as the story unfolded.

I commend the author for writing a piece of fiction such as this. I loved the way how he slowly unraveled the big picture for me, providing me with little clues and pieces of the puzzle along the way. Thus, I progressively gained a better understanding of the characters, the location, the motives, and the overall theme.

This book reminds me of another novel I read, which was Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red. That book had multiple narrators too, and was also considered postmodern literature. My praise for that book was a little reserved, but for this current book, I give it complete praise. The way it was written, it was so sensual and evocative, that I felt I was one of the people who sat down and listened as Hassan spun his tale in the Djemaa el Fna in Marrakesh.

Other minor points that I also enjoyed include the large cultural references that this book has provided. I haven't been to Morocco, but I felt like I learned a lot about Moroccan culture and society just by reading this book. It portrayed a good picture of Moroccan social dynamics, provided by scenes of paternal authority and men-women relationships. Moroccan culture, and Islamic culture as well, has been a mystery to me, and this book has allowed me to increase no matter how small my limited knowledge of this part of the world that I haven't ventured to yet. This book definitely puts Morocco into my destination list.

To conclude, I don't think I can say anything negative about this book. I am glad that I opted to pick it up, as it was one of the most wonderful books I have read recently. Needless to say, I am giving this book 5 out of 5 stars.(less)

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Jul 28, 2012 Manu Prasad rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: review

The book begins with the proposition that there is no truth, and only opinion. This is a fundamental premise of the book and important from the perspective of its narration. Hassan, the primary narrator begins his story at the Jemaa el Fna, surrounded by his listeners, the motive behind the narration supposedly to prove the innocence of his brother Mustafa, who is in jail for a crime he seemingly did not commit. It involves the disappearance of an exceedingly beautiful woman who tantalised all t...more

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Nov 09, 2012 Chantal Hintze rated it 4 of 5 stars

‘Each of us carries deep within ourselves a chamber filled with secret memories, and it is a place we would rather not reveal.’ With these words, Hassan evokes within his captive audience memories of a night long passed and invites his listeners, who soon, one by one, take centre stage and become storytellers in their own right, to unearth the truth about two missing foreigners.

Set in the Jemma el Fnaa, this modern day fable is as enigmatic and captivating as Marrakesh’s square itself and Roy-B...more

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Jun 03, 2012 Mylissa rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012-books

I didn't hate this book. Nor did I like it. At first, I was a little worried I didn't understand it, but I don't think that is the case either. The book wants to emulate the living traditions of telling stories out loud with a group of people, investigating all the different aspects, all the different truths of a matter, because everyone has a slightly different perspective. But it's executed pretty poorly.

It suffers from what I thought Les Miserables suffered from when I read that. There are m...more I didn't hate this book. Nor did I like it. At first, I was a little worried I didn't understand it, but I don't think that is the case either. The book wants to emulate the living traditions of telling stories out loud with a group of people, investigating all the different aspects, all the different truths of a matter, because everyone has a slightly different perspective. But it's executed pretty poorly.

It suffers from what I thought Les Miserables suffered from when I read that. There are multiple stories here, but I don't need to hear about the entire history of a character before he or she is introduced if he or she is not going to be important. I rolled my eyes when I battled through 70 pages of Waterloo in Les Mis for one sentence of material that moved anything along, and ended up battling through similar slush to try to get at the meat of this story. Except instead of essential characters, it's the background of each person who is going to give approx. five seconds - often overlapping, of the story the storyteller - and the other helpers are engaged in telling.

In the end, this story didn't have a lot of meat. It has a lot of tangents, and it has a good idea - the idea of truth, and how relative that is. But it doesn't end up telling you a story, nor does it really get deep into the idea of relative truth, since there is always someone there disagreeing. It tells a lot of bits of story, and it hints that maybe there is more to it, but by the time it gets into the real meat, the reader's been chewing on gristle so long that they've lost interest. My feeling was more, finally! we've gotten to something, rather than, oh look at what we gotten into now. Not to mention it wasn't enough to fill you up, or even make you want to beg for more. The idea that there might be more to it - STILL! at the end of the book had me annoyed more than intrigued.

The book isn't successful. If this is how storytelling is done in Marrakesh, maybe it doesn't translate well into written word. Maybe the plot was weak. Maybe there were too many tangents. Maybe it was the structure of the story. Maybe it was just bad. I'm not sure if it was an idea that failed, or the story itself that failed, or where it failed, but it wasn't successful. It didn't hold my interest, it didn't make me want more. All I wanted was for someone to get to the point, and that isn't what is wanted when someone is telling a story. They want to draw the reader/listener in, to hook them, to get them emotionally involved. I was only emotionally invested in how many pages I had left. (less)

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Dec 02, 2012 Booknblues rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: africa, morocco

The Storyteller of Marrakesh
By Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya
4 stars
pp. 341

During a journey to the medina (old city) of Marrakesh in the Jemaa el Fna (the square) one might find a market, snake charmers, beggars, restaurants, jugglers and storytellers and this is where Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya takes the reader to introduce Hassan, the storyteller.

The reader is given a taste of evenings storytelling. Hassan recounts the tale of to foreigners who visited the Jemaa and vanished. This is a mystery for the...more

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Sep 18, 2012 Mirna rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: adventure, inspiration, novel, travel

This is a book with beautiful flow, easy to read, author using beautiful words and fluent sentences to make images literally flow in our mind. Speaking of the art of storytelling, the author at the same time demonstrates the same skill - building sentences using colorful words, bringing in some mystery, literally building pictures with words... building some suspension, not giving it all away at once, not rushing, but really building a story, one image at time, one step at the time. At the same...more

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Jun 12, 2011 Karen rated it 3 of 5 stars

"Smoky" is the word that best describes this book. Although set in the present time, the immediate setting is by a campfire in a Moroccan town square on a winter night where a Berber storyteller tries to discover the truth & meaning in a relatively recent mystery that involves his brother. The author has a way with words, and takes a decidedly philosophical approach to truth and reality. Although the ending is less than satisfying for a book, there are some parallels that we would do well to...more

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Feb 29, 2012 Joanna rated it 3 of 5 stars

I love the premise of this book - a demonstration of how one event can be so different in the memories of the various onlookers. The main character is a storyteller who engages his listeners by having them share their own memories of the same event, while he enriches the stories they tell by giving us some of their individual histories. What I would have enjoyed more was getting a better feel for the history of Marrakesh,the place that is the backdrop for the story. There is so much culture and...more

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Oct 04, 2011 Kofykat rated it 3 of 5 stars

The style of writing is something that would appeal only to voracious readers. This is not for light readers who think that Chetan Bagat is an amazing Indian author. The first hundred pages seem like they are moving on, revealing more about the storyteller than the story that he is narrating. And at the end of a hundred pages, you would think that you have come across very little information, but realize that you have come across a lot of information. It makes you wonder whether the story is abo...more

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Jun 10, 2013 Noel rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I finished this book a few months ago, and I still think about it. The writing is undeniably beautiful. However, it took a long time for me to complete the book. I'd put it down for weeks, thinking I wouldn't finish it, but ultimately, I was drawn to the stories the storyteller told. I at first found the ending disappointing and unsettling- unsatisfied after the rich stories that were woven into the novel. But now I see that it had to end the way it did. This is a more cerebral novel, if you are...more

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Jun 12, 2011 Ruby rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: middle-east-islam, novels, mystery

Short on plot (could be completely explored in one short paragraph) but long on the mystic, emotion and rhythm of the Islam world. Lots of new vocabulary words--"probity" is the only one I remember of the many I looked up. The rendition of the language was beautiful--almost a character in the book itself. The story is told by many different characters but the voice is always the same--this adds to the unity and integrated feel of the story as seen through the eyes of the main character Hassan bu...more

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Jan 02, 2013 Donna rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: morocco, mystery, read-in-saudi-arabia

The following extract appears on page 307 of this novel, a mere 20 pages from the end:

"I listened to you with a growing desbelief that soon turned to anger. Your story was not onlu salubrious, it was a thoroughly misbegotten endeavor. There was nothing in it to emulate, no universal values or aspirations, nothing - nothing at all - worth salvaging. If there was any truth in it, it lay in its level of degredation, truly one of a kind."

My sentiments exactly after reading this book!! For someone li...more The following extract appears on page 307 of this novel, a mere 20 pages from the end:

"I listened to you with a growing desbelief that soon turned to anger. Your story was not onlu salubrious, it was a thoroughly misbegotten endeavor. There was nothing in it to emulate, no universal values or aspirations, nothing - nothing at all - worth salvaging. If there was any truth in it, it lay in its level of degredation, truly one of a kind."

My sentiments exactly after reading this book!! For someone like myself, who is married to a Moroccan, who truly knows Morocco well and has a relationship with the country itself, its people, its culture. As a person who loves Morocco as her home - this book is a sore disappointment.

This is clearly a tourist's novel. I can't imagine its author having spent more than a holiday there, or spent much time with Moroccan people at all. He is able to describe the locale well, and has done his research into artisana etc. However, his characters, especially in dialogue, brought not one iota of a true Moroccan voice. Every single character in this novel spoke with a highly educated register, using the vocabulary of a well-versed poet - even the poorest, uneducated street-performer! One, unbelievable, two, Moroccans tend to keep things simple and direct. I have many Moroccan friends who tell me stories, and not one of them dances in circles the way the Hassan of this story does. When I read the acknowledgements section of the book, I noticed not one Moroccan name was thanked. Surely if you were writing a story about Moroccan people, you would at least enlist the aid of at least one local in order to create a realistic portrayal. It certainly felt as if he was just making it up!

Regarding Jemaa el Fna. One has to wonder if the author ever visited it after dark. Well into the night it's bustling with foreigners ans Moroccans, yet he makes it sound foreboding and empty save for the most devilish of Morocco's underworld!

Had this novel been written about another country that I wasn't so familiar with, would I have liked it better? Perhaps a little. In terms of plot, it's not a bad mystery story. I'm afraid the inaccuracies in its depiction of Morocco killed it for me though.(less)

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Nov 22, 2011 Francesca rated it 2 of 5 stars

For 2/3 of the book, I really enjoyed the multiple story-tellers/eye witnesses and their embellished renditions of the what happened to the "foreigner" couple who mysteriously disappeared from the city square years earlier. But then the narrative turned into a treatise on love and beauty and then an essay on religious intolerance, which I thought diluted the impact of the main story line. It's well written, bordering on poetic at times, but the philosophical meanderings lost me in the final chap...more

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Apr 30, 2012 Rita Kay rated it 3 of 5 stars

Reminiscent of the many stories of 1001 Nights or The Arabian Nights, this novel explores the disappearance of a hauntingly beautiful French-American woman and her companion/husband from India from a Moroccan square. Everyone remembers some of the eerie details, but the stories are wildly different. The storyteller collects them all not only to entertain his listeners but also because his brother is imprisoned in connection with their disappearance.

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Jul 08, 2011 sophia rice rated it 2 of 5 stars

I sincerely tried to love the book. There's a great sense of place and time laid as a foundation and, at times, a layered, lyrical beauty to the writing; yet it's as if the writer gets lost in the sound of his narrator's voice. I get the feeling that it wasn't necessarily written with an audience in mind, so much as a way for the author to showcase his experience, philosophy, and knowledge. The only passion I felt was the author's intense love for himself.

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Feb 19, 2011 Holly rated it 2 of 5 stars

I received this free book from Goodreads. I was intrigued by the idea of a story told through the perceptions of the townspeople, and it was a good idea. I got lost in the narrator's family history and frankly didn't care. The brothers' attributes would have become clear through his actions with the two strangers. I would have liked to have seen some resolution with the two missing strangers. I really wanted to like this book; I just didn't.

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Feb 13, 2011 Christa rated it 2 of 5 stars

I enjoyed the writing style and it was kind of cool because I knew where many of the places described actually were. The author has clearly visited Marrakech. I didn't like it overall because it focused on the attention that a foreign woman and man receive while they visit the Jmaa F'na. It's multilayered and as the story proceeds, you learn more details...but it just wasn't enjoyable for me because for so much of it, I was thinking about how much the rudeness of the men in Marrakech bothered me...more

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May 13, 2011 Amy rated it 3 of 5 stars

It is a contemplative book. It's not a story you can read quickly and then move on to the next book. It took me a little while to get used to the style of writing, but once I adjusted it was enjoyable to read. At times it gets too philosophical for my tastes, so I tended to skim over those bits. No doubt I was missing out on something by doing that.

However this book both tells a story and also does its best to explain a culture which I believe makes it an excellent read for someone who wants to...more

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Jun 10, 2012 June Seghni rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: modern-fiction, mystery, north-africa

I have not yet visited the Jemaa el Fna of Marrakesh...and after reading this book I am almost afraid to, for fear it will not live up to the magical mystical descriptions of the place..
This is a story of a disappearance, but it is much more than that, with multi layered strands and musings on the nature of truth and beauty..
At the end I was so mesmerised by the layers of storytelling that I was not sure I had got to the truth of the matter..but I didn't care...I had enjoyed the experience..

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Mar 10, 2011 Carol rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011-read-booklist

This was an enchanting book in every sense of the word. I was charmed by the weaving of the storyline in and out. I felt as if I was in Marrakesh weaving in and out of the alleyways and souks.

Every year the storyteller comes to Marrakesh to relate a story of a foreign couple who disappeared years before. He comes in search of solving the mystery by relating and engaging the audience in remember their view of that night. Every year it is with a different effect.

This book has an Arabian Night fe...more

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Oct 24, 2011 Cherie In the Dooryard rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: general-fiction, spontaneous-library-picks

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, a...more

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Jan 01, 2012 Melanie rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I enjoyed this book primarily because of its descriptions of Marrakesh and of various parts of Morocco. However, I didn't find the characters to be terribly relatable, and there wasn't much development in terms of either character or plot over the course of the book. It was still worth reading if only because of the description and the window into Moroccan culture it provides.

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Apr 07, 2012 Kathleen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, africa

The book had its moments of good storytelling and narrative, but also had stretches of preachiness and philosophizing that for me were unnecessary and overbearing. Ironically the storyteller starts out talking about the listener needing to trust the storyteller and it was exactly that kind of preachiness that kept me from trusting the author.

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Jun 18, 2012 Athenameilahn rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-group-ic

This book gives the impression that the author had a deep passion for Morocco and wanted to write about it but didn't have the expertise to craft a non-fiction travelogue so he decided to turn his random bits of info into a poorly executed novel. If the author had spent more time developing the characters so I cared about them, it would be possible to overlook the open ending. Alternatively, if he had created an actual plot line I could have overlooked the shallow characters.

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Apr 04, 2011 Lindsay rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: goodreads-first-reads

*Disclosure - I received this book for free from Goodreads First-Reads.*

I was intrigued and enchanted by the exotic setting, but found the ambiguous ending and unreliable narrator ultimately dissatisfying. In all fairness, the book does warn from the first page that "there is no truth" regarding the story at the center of the tale.

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Feb 11, 2011 Joe rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: first-reads

Just won this through First Reads. Eagerly awaiting arrival.

Finished. It was an OK book. However it did not pull me in and I was not excited to continue reading it, but the story was intriguing enough for me to want to find out how it ends.

The exotic setting made it quite different from what I usually read, and it was interesting to hear about a different culture. The parts I liked best were when he was retelling stories from his childhood. The very last chapter was kinds of weird and confusing...more

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Jun 28, 2011 Jennifer rated it 1 of 5 stars

I found it extremely hard to get involved in this book. The storey teller approach is challenging in book form unless you really like this style. There is a general, loose main plot, but the story goes off on such irrelevant tangents that I just couldn't maintain a whole lot of interest.

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Mar 03, 2011 Katie Russell rated it 3 of 5 stars

Picked this up and the library and really wanted to like it more. I had a hard remembering all the characters because a new one was introduced every chapter. I was hoping more for a story told about an event that included some traditional tales from the area. This book was just ok.

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About Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya

Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya was educated in politics and philosophy at Presidency College, Calcutta, and the University of Pennsylvania. His novels The Gabriel Club and The Storyteller of Marrakesh have been published in fourteen languages. He lives in the Hudson Valley in upstate New York.

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