Returns to Marrakesh / Retour a Marrakech

"The translation is masterful in its accuracy and precision. And it is elegant. It preserves the uniqueness of Meddeb's rhythms in its prose." -Ronnie Scharfman, author of Engagement and the Language of the Subject in the Poetry of Aimé Césaire

"Throughout this many-layered poetic travelogue, the meanderings of the mind and the city's 'hedonic architecture' are one. Whether rendering Jemaa el-Fnaa's organized chaos, the city residents' sensuous and spiritual communal life, or the refined play of shadow and light in centuries-old mosques, the translation is as luxuriant as Meddeb's Marrakesh." -Teresa Villa-Ignacio, associate professor of French and translation, Kent State University

"To read Meddeb is to walk in the footsteps of a poet guided by the undulating rhythms of scents and colors, voices and spirits, portraits and shadows. More than a Marrakesh travelogue, this is a mystical journey, a dizzying quest for meaning that breathes memory into fleeting gifts and miracles." -Khalid Lyamlahy, University of Chicago

"A unique introduction to this unparalleled writer's intellectual, philosophical, spiritual, literary, architectural, and artistic wanderings, inseparable from his travel across the Mediterranean and beyond." -Thomas C. Connolly, author of A Poetic Geneology of North African Literature

"Meddeb's Marrakesh is never one city, and Esposito and Reeck honor this plurality of registers. Arabic phrases appear in their original script; Italian phrases remain in Italian; dialectal and classical Arabic are not collapsed into one another." -Jordan Silversmith, Asymptote Journal