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    The Storyteller of Marrakesh
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    The Storyteller of Marrakesh
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    The Storyteller of Marrakesh
    Audiobook10 hours

    The Storyteller of Marrakesh

    Written by Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya

    Narrated by Gerard Kyle

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Each year, the storyteller, Hassan, gathers listeners to the city square to share their recollections of a young, foreign couple who mysteriously disappeared years earlier. As various witnesses describe their encounters with the couple, Hassan hopes to light upon the details that will explain what happened to them, and to absolve his own brother, who is in prison for their disappearence. But is this annual storytelling ritual a genuine attempt to uncover the truth, or is it intended instead to weave and ambiguous mythology around a crime? The first in an ambitious cycle of novels set in the Islamic world, The Storyteller of Marrakesh is an elegant exploration of the nature of reality and our shifting perceptions of truth.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamscape Media Audio
    Release dateJan 31, 2011
    ISBN9781611200447
    Unavailable
    The Storyteller of Marrakesh

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    Reviews for The Storyteller of Marrakesh

    3.5/5

    15 ratings15 reviews

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    • 4/5
      What is beauty? What is love? What is truth? What is reality? The stories in this book weave together like threads on a killim posing these philosophical questions, while at the same time becoming an overall mystery story. The language of the narrator is both beautiful and evocative, at times poetic. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, gaining insights into a culture I know little about and into the art of story telling.
    • 4/5
      Hassan is a traditional storyteller in the Jemaa el Fna, a large public square in Marrakesh where there are souks and performers. Each year, he tells the story of two foreigners, a man and a woman traveling together, who appeared there two years prior. At the start, he explains that he is doing so to try to discover what happened to them, so he can help his brother who is in prison for a crime committed against one or both of the strangers, a crime that he is sure his brother is innocent of. The woman possessed great beauty that entranced all who saw her. That night in the Jemaa, while listening to a musical, drumming group, the woman, or both she and the man, were abducted or otherwise disappeared. Hassan and others in the audience who were there that day tell the story of what they know about the strangers, and these accounts often conflict, Rashamon fashion. Along with this main story, we also learn about Hassan's family history, the elusive nature of truth, and the meaning of beauty and love.This is another book that I enjoyed in part because it immerses the reader in a foreign culture.
    • 4/5
      More than anything else this is a celebration of language. The multiple accounts of aspects of an unresolved mystery set in a Marrakesh souk offer an intriguing commentary on reality, perception, and truth, but the underlying story is too slight to be the key source of value here. The telling of the tale is more rewarding than the tale itself but that tale has its own merits and I was mildly disappointed at the open ending even while I appreciated the ingenuity and integrity of avoiding a neat conclusion.
    • 3/5
      As many reviewers already pointed out, it is hard to submerge oneself into the plot of this book. The narrative is non-linear and written in quite a resplendent language. However, once you manage to get into it, the book is catching and riveting. I wish I would have started off reading it with more patience and focus, it would have lent more to my understanding it.
    • 5/5
      Once this book sucked me in, there was no escape. The narrator's voice is perfect--constructing scenes and stories and memories in a way that truly makes you feel as if you're sitting in a select circle on a cool evening, listening to an expert storyteller and reacting to the weave of the story that comes from his voice and those around him. The story here is magical, centering around storytelling and the magic of imagination, along with love and mystery. If you need an escape, I can't recommend this one highly enough---this book is a treasure I'll come back to, and there's no doubt that I'll be following this author and looking up his first novel.
    • 3/5
      A storyteller begins his tale one evening in the central marketplace of Marrakesh. It's a story he tells once a year, about the disappearance years ago of a young foreign couple from the Jemaa. One by one, the listeners chime in with their own stories of their encounters with the couple, shedding a little more light on what happened, but also showing the unreliability of memory and how no two people will view the same person or event in the same way. Some saw the woman as unbelievably beautiful, one man going so far as to try to buy her off of her husband, others saw her a cheap or slutty. Some thought the man was dark, some thought he had a red beard. But the story progresses of two foreigners in danger and of a vibrant Moroccan marketplace, where the different ethnic groups come together and form a community.I enjoyed the window onto another culture provided by this book. There are just not that many books available here about northern Africa that aren't written from an outsider's point of view. The book has it's own rhythm, where the story proceeds in circles, from many viewpoints, with frequent digressions.
    • 4/5
      Such a good story. Marrakesh culture and storytelling. Love it. Like reading a sheet of music. Must have underlined hundreds of sentences. So beautifully written.
    • 3/5
      Hassan is a storyteller working in the central square of Marrakesh. Storytelling is a noble and well respected occupation - one that requires a near infinite number of varations, attending to your audience's needs, and mystery. Hassan's story is about an incident that occurred at some time in the past (how long ago - one is left to wonder) - through his own stories, episodes of family life, and interviews/discussions with members of the audience he draws together a very complicated and interwoven blanket of a narrative - I found it spell-binding- but at times was lost -- there are many views (conflicting) presented - a good read if you stay with it
    • 4/5
      The Storyteller of Marrakesh is a multi-layered novel that juxtaposes the narrative structure with a collision of cultures in the Jemaa (central square) of Marrakesh. Hassan, the titular storyteller, tells a story about a foreign couple who disappear one night in the Jemaa. Like The Arabian Nights, the plot progresses by deferral. To tell his story, Hassan must tell about his childhood, for which he is the only source of information. As he turns to the foreigners, though, he defers to others who encountered the couple so that they can provide their insights into the mystery of what happened to them on that night. Ultimately, The Storyteller of Marrakesh is a good novel. As with many novels that rely on deferral to extend the plot, the novel does drag at times. The division of the book into mini-chapter is part of the problem, as some add little to the novel while others leave us wishing for more.
    • 4/5
      The Storyteller of Marakesh centers around a man who tells stories each night in the Jemaa in Marrakesh, Morocco. Specifically, the book is his telling of a certain story that he only tells once per year, every year, about his brother, Mustafa, and a young foreign couple who disappeared years earlier. Rather than merely telling the story, the storyteller also invites listeners who may have witnessed the young couple before their disappearances to share their remember of the couple and what happened that evening. Through the differences in how different people remember the same event, the storyteller manages to create a mythology and an ambiguity around the event that makes it seem magical and hints that he may have something to hide in the stories final ending.I found this book to be very engaging and a very interesting read. The author, Joydeep Roy-Battacharya, is very good at evoking the sights and sounds of the Jemaa, which allows the reader to relate to the story on a more personal level. His characters are also realistic and well-developed, as is his dialogue. All of these add to the mystery and suspense that pulsates throughout the book and pushes the reader on to the final climax.My main problem with the novel came from this climax. The ending seemed a tad bit rushed and was a bit of a letdown after such a good book until that point. The book seemed to point towards deeper meaning and hidden truths in every event and all of the dialogue throughout the book. Then, this deeper meaning seemed to be lacking in the ending, and it seemed somewhat faked and predictable. This was unfortunate because it was really a great book before that point.Overall, I felt that this was a good book despite my disappointment with the last few pages, and I am glad that I read it. The author definitely has an innate ability to see hidden truths and has an adept ability to use language to convey those truths to us. While I was a bit disappointed with the ending, this book has made me want to read more book's written by this author.
    • 3/5
      I really wanted to like this book. The backdrop was painted in beautifully and there was a lush quality to each page. Some of the individual more tangential stories were wonderful. After peeling back the onion layers, the circumlocution grew tiresome. The charterers were for the most part unappealing. A book with a shadow of brilliance lost in too many interlocking parts.
    • 2/5
      A traditional Berber storyteller spends an evening retelling the story of a long-ago evening on which two travelers disappeared from the Djemaa el Fna, the marketplace and square of Marrakesh's old city. The storyteller's brother confessed to killing them, but it is unclear whether they are dead and why he confessed. The storyteller's audience offers their own recollections of the event. There is no resolution. Frustrating and irritating; it reminded me of a lingering unpleasant dream. OK, I gave it two stars instead of one because the rendering of the Djemma was finely done and memorably atmospheric. Otherwise, I wanted to hit something with the book.
    • 4/5
      I liked, but I didn't think I would. It took easily 100 pages for this to gain momentum. The story is told from constantly changing, overlapping points of view, which slowed the pace considerably in the first third. Additionally, it started to feel a bit like an 80s TV show, with constant "guest stars" popping up with their own story lines. Once the author settled down a bit and let the narrator take over most of the tale, it moved quickly. Overall, very atmospheric, enjoyable, tension-filled, and culturally enlightening.
    • 4/5
      In order to live, a story requires a teller and an audience. In the case of Hassan, the storyteller of the Djemaa el Fna, the central square of the fabled city of Marrakesh, he involves his entire audience in the recreation of the night two foreign visitors disappeared from that very square, involving Hassan’s brother, Mustafa – a man who has sworn to pursue beauty no matter the cost, in the crime that seems to surround the incident.We often hear that stories are the means we have invented for exploring and finding life’s truths, but in this case we see that the story’s truth may be a compilation of everyone’s lies. Roy-Bhattacharya gives us an enigmatic tale, richly symbolic, and overflowing with the exotic variety of the inhabitants of northwest Africa.The mysterious young couple are so thoroughly described by the various eye-witnesses to the events of that night that they become ironically unknowable except, perhaps, as symbols of Truth and Beauty much as the Djemma becomes a symbol and an unknowable entity in its function as a nexus or navel of the world.India’s Roy-Bhattacharya creates a modern Arabesque reminiscent of "A Thousand and One Nights" in this compilation of vignettes around a central themes of what is truth and the unreliability of memory. This story about storytelling is a memorable book that will, no doubt, resonate within me for a long time.
    • 3/5
      An event in a woman's life might be ordinary or even sordid, but if the woman is extraordinarily beautiful and graceful, it may become a legend. Likewise the most unremarkable of stories, properly embellished by the vision and imagination of a master storyteller, can entrance and enchant its audience. That is both the premise and the theme of The Storyteller of Marrakesh.Hassan the storyteller narrates an account of his own telling of such a story in the Jemaa el Fna, the market square, in the historic Moroccan city of Marrakesh. The story concerns the unexplained disappearance of two persons from that very square a few years earlier. One was a man from India. His companion was French-American woman of arresting beauty. Hassan was present the evening of the disappearance, as were several of his listeners. Some of them interject their own version of events. Gradually we learn that Hassan's younger brother Mustafa plays a major but mysterious role in the events of that night.Hassan relates his story in prose that is beautiful without being complex. He paints an enticing word picture of Marrakesh and its Jemaa, and by means of the histories of several characters gives us various perspectives on the traditional cultures of Morocco. The story itself, however, is rather light on both substance and suspense. I recommend the novel chiefly for those who want to immerse themselves in the culture of Morocco.