Peter Mayne (1908-1979) is to Morocco what Peter Mayle is to Provence or Lawrence Durrell to Greece. This 1953 classic in a new edition captures the very essence of the people and place. Having already learned to appreciate Muslim life when he was in Pakistan Mayne bought a house in the labyrinthine back streets of Marrakesh. He wanted to settle there not as a privileged visitor in a hotel or grand villa but as one of the inhabitants. He learned their language made friends took part in their festivals and wrote their letters. This is not a travel book in the accepted sense of the word - it is a record of personal experience in a region of foreign life well beyond the tourist s eye. Mayne contrives in a deceptively simple prose to disseminate in the air of an English November the spicy odors of North Africa; he has turned for an hour smog to shimmering sunlight woven a texture of extraordinary charm.