To Mohamed Choukri, Tangier was the most extraordinary and mysterious city in the world. No less extraordinary was Choukri, who taught himself to read and write at the age of twenty after a childhood of poverty and petty crime. A haven for many Western writers in the twentieth century, Tangier drew the likes of Paul Bowles, Jean Genet and Tennessee Williams, all of whom were befriended by Choukri. Choukri's recollections of these encounters are collected here in a single volume for the first time, along with an afterword never before published in English. The sights and sounds of 1970s Tangier are vividly brought to life, as are the larger-than-life characters of these cult figures.