Award-winning Moroccan novelist and screenwriter Youssef Fadel was born in 1949 in Casablanca, where he lives today. During Morocco’s Years of Lead he was imprisoned in the notorious Derb Moulay Chérif prison, from 1974 to 1975. A Rare Blue Bird Flies with Me is his ninth novel and part of his modern Morocco trilogy, along with A Beautiful White Cat Walks with Me.

 

Translator Jonathan Smolin is the author of the critically acclaimed Moroccan Noir: Police, Crime, and Politics in Popular Culture (2013). He lives in Hanover, NH.