Tangier

Tangier, a northern Moroccan city situated near the strait of Gibraltar, is the primary setting of the novel, and the characters’ expectations of the city and the reality is a major theme in the novel. Mangan self-consciously references the long literary history of the city, which has been popular with Western artists for centuries as a symbolic meeting place between Europe and Africa. Often their images fall into the realm of clichés, and it is through the tropes that the English and American main characters form their expectations before arrival: “Morocco. The name conjured up images of a vast, desert nothingness, of a piercing, red sun” (8). Yet as they soon come to learn, Tangier may be beautiful, but it is full of the same old human dramas that are being played out all across the world. As Lucy attempts to understand the city, learning its old names...