SYNOPSIS

Since he was nineteen years old, Sebastian, a self-exiled Spanish photographer in London, has been descending on time to Morocco, every three years, dragged by a strange ritual of purification and passage that he cannot quite decipher. Now, about to turn forty, he begins his seventh descent. This will be his itinerary: Ceuta-Chauen-Meknes-Fès-Rabat to finish in Marrakech, where he senses that an unexpected event awaits him that will give meaning to his travel cycle and, in particular, to his life.

         The play is set in a timeless, deep Morocco, in a strange and fascinating world, as close as it is unknown, populated by real and fantastic characters. The present and the past ―the memory of previous trips to the same places― merge into another reality, visionary and magical.

         Beslama, “goodbye” in Arabic, is a rare novel that shares the taste of those nineteenth-century tales of travels to the East ―here, to the Maghreb-al-Aksa, the westernmost East―, so fashionable among European romantics and of so little tradition in Spanish literature. As a novel also “in the road”, the journey becomes a source of existential knowledge.

Cover illustration: Driss (Zagora, 2001), by Pedro Gandía.

Publisher: Huerga & Fierro, Col. Narrativa, 2021, Madrid (Spain)

ISBN: 978-84-122374-1-2

340 pp.