The Tangier Diaries

Author: John Hopkins
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857736647
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Book Description
Tangier in the 1960s and '70s was a fabled place. This edge city, the 'Interzone', became muse and escapist's dream for artists, writers, millionaires and socialites, who wrote, painted, partied and experienced life with an intensity and freedom that they never could back home. Into this louche and cosmopolitan world came John Hopkins, a young writer who became a part of the bohemian Tangier crowd with its core of Beats that included William Burroughs, Paul and Jane Bowles and Brion Gysin, as well as Tennessee Williams, Jean Genet, Yves Saint Laurent, Barbara Hutton and Malcolm Forbes. Those intoxicating decades - Tangier's 'Golden Years' - are long gone. Grand old houses that once sparkled with life are shuttered and dark and most of the eccentrics who once lived and loved in the city have died. But here, in the pages of John Hopkins' cult classic, all the decadence and flamboyance of those days is brought to life once more.

The Tangier Diaries, 1962-1979

Author: John Hopkins
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 268

Book Description
Princeton grad John Hopkins came to Tangier after adventures in Peru. In addition to the portraiture of the city and its inhabitants, Hopkins' life in Marrakech and his trips into Morocco's Sahara, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Spanish Sahara, Mauretania, Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, Togo, Cameroun, Swaziland and Mozambique are chronicled in entries rich with detail. The glamour, mystery, poverty and opulence of Tangier, the country of Morocco and Africa jumps from every page. The author presents a huge and dizzying cast of writers, painters, socialites, trance dancers, eccentrics, party-givers, magicians, aristocrats, confidence men and expat residents from the early sixties through the late seventies. One encounters Paul and Jane Bowles, Barbara Hutton, William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Princess Ruspoli, Malcolm Forbes, Tennessee Williams, Mohammed M'rabet, The Hon. David Herbert, Ira Bilankine, Ted Morgan, The Countess de Breteuil and her fabulous mud castle in Marrakech, The Lady Caroline Duff, Jim Wyllie, Elizabeth Vreeland, Jean Genet, Elizabeth David, Alec Waugh, Alfred Chester, Margaret Lane, Louise de Meuron, Adolfo de Velasco, Marguerite McBey and countless others. The Tangier Diaries includes eight pages of photographs, and is invaluable for anyone interested in Tangier and the colorful figures who have lived there.

Night Boat to Tangier

Author: Kevin Barry
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385540329
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Book Description
ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • “A darkly incantatory tragicomedy of love and betrayal ... Beautifully paced, emotionally wise.” —The Boston Globe In the dark waiting room of the ferry terminal in the sketchy Spanish port of Algeciras, two aging Irishmen—Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redmond, longtime partners in the lucrative and dangerous enterprise of smuggling drugs—sit at night, none too patiently. The pair are trying to locate Maurice’s estranged daughter, Dilly, whom they’ve heard is either arriving on a boat coming from Tangier or departing on one heading there. This nocturnal vigil will initiate an extraordinary journey back in time to excavate their shared history of violence, romance, mutual betrayals, and serial exiles. Rendered with the dark humor and the hardboiled Hibernian lyricism that have made Kevin Barry one of the most striking and admired fiction writers at work today, Night Boat to Tangier is a superbly melancholic melody of a novel, full of beautiful phrases and terrible men.

Tangier

Author: Richard Hamilton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786726475
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Book Description
In this first guide to Tangier's extraordinary cultural history , former BBC North Africa correspondent Richard Hamilton explores the city to find out what has inspired so many international writers, artists and musicians. In Tangier, the Moroccan novelist Mohamed Choukri wrote, 'everything is surreal and everything is possible.' In this intimate portrait, Hamilton explores hotels, cafés, alleyways and the city's darkest secrets. Delving down through complex historical layers, he finds a frontier town that is comic, confounding and haunted by the ghosts of its past. Samuel Pepys thought God should destroy Tangier and St Francis of Assisi called it a city of 'madness and delusions.' Yet, throughout the centuries, it has also been a crucible of creativity. It was a turning point in Henri Matisse's artistic journey and had a profound impact on the founder of the Rolling Stones, Brian Jones. Tangier also produced two of the greatest American novels of the twentieth century: The Sheltering Sky and Naked Lunch. Besides Paul Bowles and William Burroughs, the book also looks at lesser known characters such as the flawed genius, Brion Gysin, as well as Ibn Battuta, who travelled three times further than Marco Polo. Featuring a thrilling cast of pirates, sultans, artists, musicians, writers, princes and playboys, this is an essential read about Tangier.

Pepys's Later Diaries

Author: Samuel Pepys
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0752495321
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 180

Book Description
Pepys never resumed the personal Diary which he abandoned in 1669 fearing he was going blind. He was one of the greatest accidental historians, never intending to record for posterity, but for amusement. This book makes these diaries available to the general reader. These documents enhance the picture of Pepys as a politician and civil servant.

The Tangier Archive

Author: Carlos Traspaderne
Publisher: Uniform Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
"In 1999 a collection of small wooden boxes was discovered in a flea market in Tangier. Inside these boxes were 500 glass stereoscopic negatives and handwritten notes from a French officer, who took over 250 photographs between 1916 and 1918. This book highlights previously unseen images taken across the Western Front capturing all aspects of war; from the banal and odd moments to the cruel and brutal ones. It is a vision of one officer.

The South American Diaries

Author: John Hopkins
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857736655
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Book Description
While writing a novel set in South America, John Hopkins travelled back there to "reacquaint himself with the scene". In 1972-3, he travelled by train, bus and boat from Mexico City to the centre of the continent, through Belize, Guatemala and Nicaragua and on to Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina. Hopkins travelled slowly, deliberately, savouring every experience along the way. But the journey was fraught with his angst-ridden strivings to write his novel and with the troubled love he had for Madeleine, his travelling companion. In these heat-scorched, tequila-infused pages, Hopkins paints a sultry, exquisite portrait of South America and in so doing masters an art that he believed would forever elude him.

The White Nile Diaries

Author: John Hopkins
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857734849
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 201

Book Description
It all began at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station, New York, in 1961 - Two Princeton graduates - John Hopkins and Joe McPhillips - have returned from Peru. Loathe to return to a life of work, marriage and mortgages, they are tempted by a mysterious letter from Kenya. Hatching a plan to ride a motorbike across North Africa, they buy a sleek, white R50 BMW and paint her name - 'The White Nile' - on the fuel tank, in honour of the route they plan to follow. In limpid, elegant prose, Hopkins describes deadly salt deserts and fig-laden oases, disappeared travellers and the funerals of young Tunisians killed in the battle for independence. He conjures up the ghosts of ancient Rome in Leptis Magna and of Homer's Lotus Eaters in Djerba . They encounter armed vigilantes in the Tunisian desert and outrun Libyan border patrols, barely escaping with their lives. They climb the pyramids of Giza at dawn and ride the 'Desert Express' across the wastelands of the Nubian Desert, but their final adventure, at Sam Small's Impala Ranch, is perhaps the most surreal of all -

Paul Bowles

Author: Virginia Spencer Carr
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743273508
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 633

Book Description
Paul Bowles, best known for his classic 1949 novel, The Sheltering Sky, is one of the most compelling yet elusive figures of twentieth-century American counterculture. In this definitive biography, Virginia Spencer Carr has captured Bowles in his many guises: gifted composer, expatriate novelist, and gay icon, to name only a few. Born in New York in 1910, Bowles' brilliance was evident from early childhood. His first artistic interest was music, which he studied with the composer Aaron Copland. Bowles wrote scores for films and countless plays, including pieces by Tennessee Williams and Orson Welles. Over the course of his life, his intellectual pursuits led him around the world. He cultivated a circle of artistic friends that included Gertrude Stein, W.H. Auden, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, Allen Ginsburg, William Burroughs, Stephen Spender, and Carson McCullers. Just as fascinating for his flamboyant personality as for his literary success, Bowles' leftist politics and experimentation with drugs make him an ever-controversial character. Carr delves into Bowles' unconventional marriage to Jane Auer and his self-exile in Morocco. Close friends with him before his death in 1999, Carr's first-hand knowledge of Bowles is undeniable. This book encompasses her personal experiences plus ten years of research and interviews with some two hundred of Bowles' acquaintances. Virginia Spencer Carr has written a riveting biography that tells not only the story of Paul Bowles' literary genius, but also of a crucial period of redefinition in American culture. Carr is simultaneously entertaining and precise, delivering a wealth of information on one of the most mythologized figures of mid-century literature.

The Shorter Pepys

Author: Samuel Pepys
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520034266
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1164

Book Description
Selections from Samuel Pepys' diary offers a vivid picture of seventeenth century British life, and are accompanied by background information concerning his life and times