Milkweed Editions is proud to announce the publication of Larabi's Ox: Stories of Morocco by Tony Ardizzone, the winner of the 1992 Milkweed National Fiction Prize. Gloria Naylor, author of The Women of Brewster Place, Bailey's Cafe, and Mama Day, acted as competition judge and has written the foreword.
Larabi's Ox is a tapestry of interwoven stories that relates the tales of three Americans visiting Morocco for the first time. Sarah Rosen, traveling alone, is running away from a failed relationship; Peter Corvino, an American professor, is escaping from his own mediocrity; Henry Goodson is running toward his impending death from cancer. Morocco is strange, mysterious, colorful; the clash and interconnection between these travelers and the Islamic culture are the fabric of the collection.
"Larabi's Ox offers what the best fiction does: the felt human landscape with its terrifying heights and abysses; its oddly shaped and jarring strangeness; the awed realization on your part that, against all rhythm and reason, the artist has taken you home." -- Gloria Naylor
"Larabi's Ox places Tony Ardizzone in our first rank of story writers. His range is wide enough to embrace man and beast, infidel and Muslim, the fallen and the saved; his empathy is such that he immediately makes compelling any character that appears. These are wise stories, memorably told, beautifully written." -- W. D. Wetherell
"Ardizzone has gone into an alien land, taken it on its own terms, and captured the essence of the place -- the smells, the rhythms, the colors, the philosophy. Some writers deal with the foreign by making it familiar; Ardizzone has somehow kept it foreign, and so allows us to see what connects and what doesn't. When he's done, the place is at it is -- it is we who are different." -- David Bradley
"Vibrant, absorbing, and ingenious as a fine collage, Larabi's Ox is a collection of superb stories, and far more. Tony Ardizzone's stunning portrait of Morocco is a grave and intricate riddle whose answers reveal the soul of human striving. Look into these memorable characters and you will encounter your essential self." -- Susan Dodd
Larabi's Ox is a tapestry of interwoven stories that relates the tales of three Americans visiting Morocco for the first time. Sarah Rosen, traveling alone, is running away from a failed relationship; Peter Corvino, an American professor, is escaping from his own mediocrity; Henry Goodson is running toward his impending death from cancer. Morocco is strange, mysterious, colorful; the clash and interconnection between these travelers and the Islamic culture are the fabric of the collection.
"Larabi's Ox offers what the best fiction does: the felt human landscape with its terrifying heights and abysses; its oddly shaped and jarring strangeness; the awed realization on your part that, against all rhythm and reason, the artist has taken you home." -- Gloria Naylor
"Larabi's Ox places Tony Ardizzone in our first rank of story writers. His range is wide enough to embrace man and beast, infidel and Muslim, the fallen and the saved; his empathy is such that he immediately makes compelling any character that appears. These are wise stories, memorably told, beautifully written." -- W. D. Wetherell
"Ardizzone has gone into an alien land, taken it on its own terms, and captured the essence of the place -- the smells, the rhythms, the colors, the philosophy. Some writers deal with the foreign by making it familiar; Ardizzone has somehow kept it foreign, and so allows us to see what connects and what doesn't. When he's done, the place is at it is -- it is we who are different." -- David Bradley
"Vibrant, absorbing, and ingenious as a fine collage, Larabi's Ox is a collection of superb stories, and far more. Tony Ardizzone's stunning portrait of Morocco is a grave and intricate riddle whose answers reveal the soul of human striving. Look into these memorable characters and you will encounter your essential self." -- Susan Dodd
