Mohammed Mrabet Hadidan Aharam Paul Bowles Black Sparrow 1975

Description

This is one of those deceptively modest Black Sparrow publications that opens into a much larger literary world. Mohammed Mrabet was a Moroccan storyteller associated with the expatriate literary circle surrounding Paul and Jane Bowles in Tangier. Mrabet told his stories orally. Paul Bowles recorded them and translated them into English, producing an unusual body of collaborative literature that included Love with a Few Hairs, M’Hashish, The Boy Who Set the Fire, Look and Move On and The Big Mirror. The process is stated plainly—and wonderfully—right on this cover: “Taped & Translated From the Moghrebi by Paul Bowles.”

Hadidan Aharam appeared as Sparrow 37 in October 1975, part of Black Sparrow Press’s monthly series devoted to the work of a single author. This is the first edition and first printing, issued in just 1,220 copies, with the wonderful Black Sparrow typography and red-and-black printing that makes the series immediately recognizable. And then there’s that back cover: Lawrence, Blackburn, Rakosi, Spicer, Ashbery, Oates—a miniature snapshot of what Black Sparrow was publishing at the time. A terrific intersection of Tangier, Bowles, Moroccan oral storytelling and the American literary underground of the 1970s.

A small publication with a surprisingly big literary pedigree—and a great piece of Black Sparrow and Paul Bowles history.