An edge city, poised at the northernmost tip of Africa, just nine miles across the Strait of Gibraltar from Europe and overlooking both the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, Tangier is more than a destination, it is an escape, and the Interzone, as William Burroughs called it, has attracted spies, outlaws, outcasts and writers for centuries – men and women working out at the edge of literary forms, breaking through artistic borders. This outlaw originality is what most astonishes when encountering the literary history of Tangier for the first time. Particularly in the past century, the results were some of the most incendiary and influential books of our time, the most prominent being Burroughs’ Naked Lunch and Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky. The list of “edge” writers who were drawn to Tangier is long, among them Ibn Battuta, Samuel Pepys, Alexandre Dumas, Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, Walter Harris, Jean Genet, Paul and Jane Bowles, Tennessee Williams, William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Patricia Highsmith, Jack Kerouac, Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, Allen Ginsberg, Alfred Chester, Joe Orton, and Mohamed Choukri.
- “[A] work of passion and of experience.” (Book of the Month) – The Sunday Times (July 7, 2013)
- “[A] sure-footed guide to the lore and literature of an enigmatic city.” – The Times (July 27, 2013)
- “It’s a heady mix of tolerance and vice, and is often very funny, too. …a marvellously odd, gossipy romp of a book.” – Country Life (August 21, 2013)
- “Engaging” – The Spectator (August 24, 2013)
- “Excellent…more lively than its predecessors.” – The Times Literary Supplement (September 6, 2013)
- “The book takes the form of a Barnes & Noble café mural, in which the great writers across the decades all sit together sipping coffee.” The Weekly Standard (December 30, 2013)
- “Wonderfully elegant” – Condé Nast Traveller (January 2014)
- “Brilliant” – The Guardian (October 2015)
- “[An] indispensable tome” – The New York Times (April 16, 2016)
