The Casablanca Quartet is a series of four historical novels telling the fascinating story of the city of Casablanca between the American military landing in 1942 (the United States' first in the Western Hemisphere in World War II) and the end of the French protectorate in 1956. The central character is the city that was then one of the world's most cosmopolitan and violent. Its story is told through a dozen characters, most based on real people whose stories have rarely been told, including: an American Navy pilot who crashes into Morocco in 1943, returning years later to build a secret American bunker housing an atomic bomb; a Moroccan prostitute and tattoo artist trapped in a vast brothel built by the French administration; a cell of Moroccan "terrorists" detonating bombs in Frenchtown; a gang of rightwing French "counter-terrorists" machine-gunning local cafes in the name of the "real" Morocco; a lowly policeman working as a hitman for the French secret services; a powerful French politician whose love for his adopted country, and for the wrong person, will lead to his assassination; and the first Moroccan pilot, a charismatic girl of fourteen, who becomes a powerful symbol of freedom. Their adventures intersect, transforming each person in unexpected ways, while echoing our contemporary clash between the West and the Arab world, including the consequences of colonialism, the politicization of terrorism, and more fundamentally, our eternal struggle to break free as individuals.
The Casablanca Quartet is an astonishing feat of research and imagination that will reward fans of works like John Dos Passos's U.S.A. and David Simon's series The Wire, as well as history buffs. This second volume includes the third and fourth books, Resistance and Freedom, and a first includes the first and second books, War and Peace.
