BOOKS FROM MOROCCOStraight from the Horse's Mouth : A Novel
Tags:
Set in Morocco
Female author
Description:
Named a Best Book of the Year by the Los Angeles Public Library This hilarious, colorful portrait of a sex worker navigating life in modern Morocco introduces a promising new literary voice. Thirty-four-year-old prostitute Jmiaa reflects on the bustling world around her with a brutal honesty, but also a quick wit that cuts through the drudgery. Like many of the women in her working-class Casablanca neighborhood, Jmiaa struggles to earn enough money to support herself and her family—often including the deadbeat husband who walked out on her and their young daughter. While she doesn’t despair about her profession like her roommate, Halima, who reads the Quran between clients, she still has to maintain a delicate balance between her reality and the “respectable” one she paints for her own more conservative mother. This daily grind is interrupted by the arrival of an aspiring young director, Chadlia, whom Jmiaa takes to calling “Horse Mouth.” Chadlia enlists Jmiaa’s help on a film project, initially just to make sure the plot and dialogue are authentic. But when she’s unable to find an actress who’s right for the starring role, she turns again to Jmiaa, giving the latter an incredible opportunity for a better life. In her breakout debut novel, Meryem Alaoui creates a vibrant picture of the day-to-day challenges faced by working people in Casablanca, which they meet head-on with resourcefulness and resilience.
Reviews:
(3 months ago) |
18 Jun, 2025
Jmiaa is a sex worker in Morocco who is approached by a young film director doing research into the sex trade for a movie she hopes to direct and produce. The story is entertaining but leaves me with the same feeling provoked by the film Pretty Woman which diminishes the reality of the majority of sex workers in favour of the more aesthetically pleasing presentation. While some may find life as a sex worker liberating and empowering the majority are coerced into it with few alternatives. Morocco has recently become a place with a thriving sex tourism industry, which may benefit a very small percent of sex workers at the expense of causing an increase in sex trafficking, often of underage males and females. Writing a light hearted book about an industry in which most workers do not see the glamour and riches achieved by these fictional characters seems exploitive in its own way. Nor does the book (in my opinion) accurately portray the horrors of drug and/alcohol addiction. Jmiaa, a person who numbs herself with alcohol daily for years, is able to quit (without withdrawal symptoms) simply by looking in the mirror and saying “no more.” Overall, the book is entertaining but I can’t really find too much enjoyment in something that, though not 100% of the time, is in fact the exploitation of a vulnerable population.
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