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The Road to Fez

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18-year-old Brit Lek returns to Morocco to fulfil her mother's dying wish that she make a pilgrimage to Fez, visiting the grave of Suleika, a 19th century Jewish martyr revered by both Arabs and Jews. But she is distracted from her intentions when she falls in love with her mother's passionate, restless younger brother, Uncle Gaby -- who is also the town womanizer. Gaby tries to break free from the restrictions on his life as a Jew in Morocco by working with Arab potters and creating art that speaks a universal language. The Road To Fez is a passionate novel of love and self-discovery. Author Ruth Setton has a knack for bringing truly original characters to her splendidly engaging story that linger in the mind long after the novel is finished and set back upon the shelf.

If you've never been to Fez, you'll feel like you have after reading Ruth Knafo Setton's 'The Road to Fez'... She creates and successfully sustains an abstract atmosphere of tension and mystique throughout the story, all the while her descriptions of the land and its characters are so vivid and concrete they are almost tangible. The colors and the smells of a land and time so removed from ours, stick with you long after the last page is turned. Very shortly after starting her story, you'll become familiar with a way of life described so intimately, you are startled to remember that Brit, the main character, is actually not wholly of this magical place. Even Brit has to pull back from her daily experience to remember she has options to return to her former life in the US. The land and people are so real and intense that you, as a reader, will become part of it as well. If you hear the Sirens calling you to read this book, listen to them.!

Ruth Knafo Setton was my literature professor for three years. I literally took whatever class she taught. It didn't matter because I knew that she would transform the subject with her unique blend of passion, intelligence, humor and brilliance. She is the best teacher I have ever had, and it is no exaggeration to say that she has changed my life. I was impatiently waiting for her book to come out, and now that I've read it, I am thrilled to see that she writes with the same passion with which she teaches and relates to people. I think everyone who's ever been fortunate enough to be in one of her classes will agree. She's the best! Read The Road to Fez! It will definitely live in your mind. It's hot, no doubt about it, but even more, it's the kind of book you want to hug to yourself, like a secret joy.

This novel is a fantastic collage of fragments of memory, desire, and loss. It is a miracle to me how Ruth Knafo Setton manages to convey so much in such a slim book. I think many contemporary writers could learn from her editing skills. With powerful precision, she introduces the reader to a vibrant Sephardic family in Morocco. Through this family, the reader feels the longing and pain of a forbidden love, delves into the mysteries of the brief, tragic life of a young girl, and explores issues of identity, exile, and home -- all described in dazzling language that brings to mind Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet and Cavafy's poetry. The story pulls you forward with suspense and intrigue, while the language holds you with its shimmering intensity. The questions the author raises about love and identity resonate after the last page is turned. I don't say this lightly or often, but I love this book.

Knafo Setton succeeds here with he first novel in describing the world of the Jewish Sephardim in Morocco and most precisely the world of women in Judaism.
The novel starts by menstruation, and by doing so, the novel marks its field. This is done very mildly, and probably in the way Moroccan women feel their period.
Very quickly we are thrown into the life of Brit Lek, born in Fez and emigrating with her parent into small town USA, then coming back at the age of 17 because of the wish of her dead mother that she visit the grave of Suleika. Suleika is a
mythological woman for the Jews of Morocco, executed in 1834 for not agreeing to convert to Islam. Many different versions, luding the version of Brit, to this history are brought in this book. All this happens in a very tense period of Moroccan Jewry, 1969, just after the six days war, when many of the Jews have already left the country for Israel or France or other parts of the globe. And just a few days before most of the Jews in Morocco disappeared from the small and big cities, with just a tiny community concentrating in Casablanca.
Brit Lek falls in love with her older/masculine twin, her uncle Gaby. He feels the same, but what used to be common among Jews, an uncle marrying his niece, is now a forbidden love, not able to come to fruition. Gaby, a man of many women, and one marriage, ended by the suicide of his wife, is considered guilty of the death of his wife, Estrella. Estrella is one the most vivid secondary characters here, and asks from her husband to beat her everyday, or else she can't make love to him or be his wife. Gaby can't do so, and in despair she burns herself in flames.

I liked very much the fact that there is no idealization of the life between Jews and Muslims in Morocco, as is often the case in books of this subject. Neither are the Muslims depicted as Jew-killers and haters as in other books. "The Road To Fez" describes a complicated relationship between these two groups, but it was always the Jews who had to suffer from changing of times and upheavals. Brit's father describes convincingly the big pogrom in Fez at the beginning of the 20th century, and how his mother was saved thanks to the Pasha, and all her family killed. That's why he decides to leave Morocco when he is older, and why, when he comes to the states, he says he is a "Catholic from Paris".

This is a very richly textured novel, not one very easy to describe in a few hundred words, and most of it reads as an open dream. I have tried here just to open your appetite to read one of the best novels I have read in the last 3 years and probably one of the best first novels I ever came through in my life. I expect Ruth Knafo Setton will become one the best writers and most famous writers in this century.

I heard Ms. Setton read in NYC last year, and not only is she the best reader I've ever heard, but her book is a powerhouse! I've been dreaming about Brit, the 18 year old protagonist, since I read the book. She is funny, sad, more real than most of the people I know. And I loved exploring Morocco with her! Setton is probably the most sensually voluptuous writer I've ever read. When you go through the streets of Fez with her, you smell the markets, taste the foods she describes, feel the rain and sun. This book is erotic and gorgeous and guaranteed to make you dream. Write on, Ms. Setton!

This book reads the way a dream unfolds: inevitable and urgent, tale within tale, word by word. Setton is a true discovery! She transported me to a Mediterranean world of sun, shadow, brilliance, a world I've never encountered in American literature before, but one I hope I'll encounter again. The last time I remember feeling like this was after reading the Arabian Nights! I love this book for many reasons but primarily because Setton doesn't write about desire as if it's a dirty word, or something to be avoided. In this book, people long for God, a home and a lover with equal intensity. It's one of these perfect short novels, with not a single unnecessary word. When I got near the end, I kept turning back and rereading because I didn't want to leave the magical world of The Road to Fez. Today it is wintry cold outside but I still feel the power, wisdom and beauty of the characters of this book warming me.

This is the kind of book you read as if you're in a dream, and don't want to finish because you know it will be the end of the dream and you don't want to wake up. As soon as I put it down, I wanted to reread it! Then I wished I could enter the world Ruth Knafo Setton created. I felt as if I'd lived in the Morocco of myth and memory that she created, as if I'd taken a voyage through the landscape of the heart. It's the land of passion and desire and wonder, the land we all live in until we enter the grown-up world of walls and barriers and signs that say Keep Out. Every single word in this novel suggests images and themes that are infinite and profound, and yet it's a very short book. Just like a dream, every event leads to mystery and clarity. I wouldn't be surprised if I turn a corner one day and bump into the characters, Brit and Gaby and Suleika. They're definitely alive somewhere!

I didn't know what to expect when a friend gave me this book but I was completely blown away by Ruth Knafo Setton's beautiful, pasionate writing. THE ROAD TO FEZ tells the story of a forbidden love affair between Gaby and Brit, two desperate, lost souls who need each other more than they realize. What the reader comes to understand, along with the lovers, is that love is a miracle that cannot be judged or limited. Gaby and Brit echo other lovers in the novel, all separated by society's rules. But these two take a chance and find a love they never dreamed of. I couldn't put this book down, and ever since I finished it, I've been dreaming of Gaby and Brit!
I was shocked to learn that this is Ruth Knafo Setton's first novel. She writes with so much power, confidence and urgency. I've never read a book like this one that is so erotic, tragic, funny and magical. I'll be on the lookout for her next book!
You've got a new fan, Ms. Setton!

I am grateful to Ms. Knafo Setton for giving us this book. The Road to Fez whipped around my house and has a life uniquely its own. The publishing of this novel is a return to the stories that need to be told--urgency and matters of the soul. The lyric quality of the words bring fire and storm like the voice of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. The book fills me with this music that makes me sing and sob on the subways of this city.