I’ve only read this story once, and a long time ago, when I had some time to kill in a bookshop in Manchester, but it has stayed with me ever since, and I keep meaning to buy a copy and read it again, but I never do. It’s a story about an academic who has returned to a small Moroccan village to look up an old friend, but then finds himself lured into a trap – I can’t really say any more without giving too much a way. It’s the manner in which this story takes an unexpected turn, so that it is almost like two stories, the one emerging from the other, that has been a strong influence on my own writing. It is also unexpectedly dark and cruel, to the extent you wonder why an author would want to do that to one of their characters – but then sometimes you just have to.
First published in The Partisan Review, 1947, now available from Penguin Modern Classics, 2014
A Personal Anthology 