In Tangier We Killed the Blue Parrot is a reissue of a book first published in 2005 but still arousing interest. A Spanish edition came out earlier this year and an academic article on it appeared in the Commonwealth Journal of Literature last December.
In it, Barbara Adair takes a fictionalised look at the lives of writers Paul and Jane Bowles in Morocco in the 1940s, a time when Tangier was an open city, controlled by various powers and popular with Europeans and Americans looking for a hedonistic life free from the moralistic constraints of their home countries. These ex-pats were more than prepared to exploit their hosts, both sexually and intellectually. Both Paul and Jane were writers, Paul best known for The Sheltering Sky (now probably better remembered in Bernardo Bertolucci’s film version) and Jane for Two Serious Ladies. Paul was also a composer and collector of indigenous music.
In writing that moves between straightforward narrative and stream of consciousness from Paul, Jane and Belaquassim, the young Moroccan man who is Paul’s lover, Adair explores creativity, exile, eroticism and the complexities of a colonial society. And, above all, jealousy. Jane is jealous of Paul’s success as a writer, which came after hers and surpassed hers; Belaquassim is jealous of both Jane’s relationship with Paul and with Paul’s interest in other men; Paul is jealous of anything, particularly Jane’s drinking, which comes between him and his creative impulse. He is the ultimate outsider, taking what Morocco has to offer, but giving little in return, except in his strange love for Jane.
In Tangier We Killed the Blue Parrot is a self-consciously literary novel, written with great skill and creating a haunting snapshot of life at a specific time and place.
In Tangier We Killed the Blue Parrot is published by Modjaji Books. ISBN 978-1-928433-08-8 - Margaret von Klemperer
Posts
