Book Description:
Hailed as a marvel and awarded France's most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, One Way recounts the comic, absurd, and all too believable adventures of Aziz Kemal, a young Frenchman raised as an Arab by Marseilles gypsies. Arrested for a crime he didn't commit, Aziz becomes the target of a government campaign to repatriate illegal immigrants and finds himself en route to Morocco, despite the fact that he isn't Moroccan. Accompanying Aziz is a touchingly na ve and neurotic 'humanitarian attach ' named Jean Pierre Schneider who drowns his personal woes in his zeal to build a new life for his charge in a land neither one has ever seen. <P>It is on the plane to Morocco that events take an unexpected turn, when Aziz, pressed for details of a 'birthplace' that isn't his, invents the fabulous story of Irghiz, a valley paradise hidden from the world and now in danger of ruin. From this moment on, the attach forgets his original assignment and has only one mission: to return Aziz to the Eldorado he left behind and save it from the ravages of modern progress. So begins an initiatory journey that takes Aziz, Jean Pierre, and a disabused aristocrat named Valerie d'Armeray de Villeneuve across a desert both real and mythic, pursuing a vision of happiness as elusive as Irghiz itself. <P>At once humorous and poignant, the story of this journey is 'a beautifully realized blend of sensitivity, humor, intelligence, and good sense . . . a rich and engaging novel, filled with a lucid and compassionate humanity. (Jean Claude Lebrun)
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