AUTHOR: Cristian Crusat
PUBLISHER: Editorial Pre-Textos
GENRE: Characterized on author’s website as:“libro fronterizo”
READER’S NAME: Julia Cisneros Fitzpatrick
DATE: June 9, 2020

Mr. Crusat’s writing style may be delightful for Spanish readers on the peninsula, and possibly for cultured readers in Latin American countries. If a highly-skilled translation into English were achieved which reflects the power and delicacy of the author’s language, maybe a norteamericano might be moved to read the book and actually grasp the flavor of Morocco. But even so, I don’t think it would do well on the U.S. market, with no insult intended to my fellow Americans. The reason: There is no plot, there are no characters to follow, and the various segments seem disconnected. There are, at the beginning, short essays about the history of the berber people, including legends and myths, which I found a bit hard to follow. What was history and what was invention? Vignettes about present-day life in the former Spanish Morocco, later in the book might grab hold of a traveler’s interest, but my impression is that Morocco does not rank high with Americans as a tourist destination.

According to Crusat’s web site, he has written several books, including some about this area of the world. He holds a doctorate in comparative literature from Amsterdam University. His descriptive powers are remarkable; he must take copious notes and is gifted in creating word pictures. The book, sadly, has very inadequate illustrations. The author also often drops names of people, famous and unknown, who have also written on his subjects, probably because he is an academic. In the last half of this book he takes us on a trip to the city of Agadir. We don’t know we are on a bus until there is a rest stop, which is artfully described. En route, he launches into a literary discussion, about the conflicts between imagination and reality in the Quijote. The U.S. reader wonders, where is this going? Nowhere. Then what follows is a more lengthy narrative about colorful present-day life in Morocco. Within that narrative, Crusat muses that tourists would prefer to read a tourist guide rather than a traveler’s stories. I must, regretfully, somewhat agree.