IN TANGIER WE KILLED THE BLUE PARROT

146pp., paperback, Reprint, Cape Town, (2004) 2020

Novel set in Morocco in the 1940s, based on the life of writers Paul and Jane Bowles.

Short listed for the 2004 Sunday Times Fiction Award.

"A haunting tale, delicately told. Writerly narcissism, betrayal, moral confusion, love, lust and loss are the themes developed here in the context of the historical foray of Jane and Paul Bowles into Morocco. It ... lingers in the mind through the quiet but compelling depictions of artistic grandiosity, hubris and despair set against a backdrop of power struggles in dysfunctional relationships and against the weft of politics and an economy of survival in a developing country. Yet it also leaves the reader with an overbearing sense of melancholy and sadness about the (unavoidable?) traps of desire and exoticism that any western writer confronting any 'other' will encounter." Marlene van Niekerk, author of Triomf and Agaat 

Barbara Adair is the author of the novel End. She has practised as an attorney and taught constitutional law at the University of the Witwatersrand. She works with the Wits Writing Centre at the University of the Witwatersrand.