The Bottom of the Jar [Paperback]

The Bottom of the Jar is the journey of a boy finding his footing in the heart of Fez during the 1950s, as Morocco began freeing itself from the grip of the French colonial occupation. The narrator vividly recalls his first encounters with the ebullient city, family dramas, and the joys and turbulence of his childhood. He recalls a renegade, hashish-loving uncle, who at nightfall transforms into a beloved Homer, his salt-of-the-earth mother's impassioned pleas to a Divine ear, and his father's enduring generosity. Told in the spirit of a late-night ramble among friends where hilarious anecdotes and poignant recollections flow in equal parts, Laâbi's autobiographical novel offers us a generous glimpse into the formative experiences of a great poet, whose integrity and commitment to social justice earned him an eight-and-a-half year prison sentence during Morocco's year of lead in The 1970s.Fire. Germination. Birth. Blood. All these themes are burnished and boned image by image until they echo through Abdellatif's book.... Abdellatif Laâbi, as you will see, is a member of the same cell as Dostoevsky, Hikmet, Soyinka, Cervantes... —Breyten Breytenbach, for Rue du Retour

By the winner of the Goncourt Prize for Poetry The Bottom of the Jar is surely the novel I wrote with the greatest joy. —Abdellatif Laâbi

At once classic (in tone) and modern (in form), The Bottom of the Jar is imbued with humor and a sensibility that gives it a certain magic. The result: two hundred fifty pages of pure pleasure. —La Vie Economique

A master of his art. —Le Nouvel Observateur

A valuable book: inventive and philosophically amusing, it assures us that despite dark times, human virtue still lS0