Book Launch: “Through the Peacock Gate” by Sandy McCutcheon
Monday, April 16th at 6 PM
ALIF Riad, 6 Derb Drissi, Batha
The launch will be conducted by Australian satirist and artist, Bryan Dawe.
This is a chance to purchase a signed, first edition of the novel.
“Through the Peacock Gate” takes you on the journey of a foreigner in Morocco, whose unexpected infatuation leads him into the very heart of the Sufi mystical experience. His descent into madness is exacerbated by his guilt over a tragedy in his past. As he recovers, he is forced to confront a female djinn during a Sufi ceremony in an encounter that could once again tip him back into insanity.
The novel is a rare example of contemporary English fiction drawing on traditional Moroccan folklore. Written in gripping English prose fused with Arabic words, the novel gives an authentic insight into a Westerner’s experience of modern Moroccan society, whilst simultaneously exposing the reader to the country’s rich cultural history by weaving classic Moroccan folk takes and the mysteries of Sufism into its fabric. The book not only explores the point where East and West merge, but the collision of the human world with the world of the djinns – mysterious shape-shifting creatures of an unseen realm.
“Sandy McCutcheon’s latest novel Through the Peacock Gate is the kind of book those of us who live between Occident and Orient have waited an entire lifetime to read. The interweaving layers, the quality of the prose and, most of all, the raw bedrock of cultural knowledge on which it is founded, makes this an invaluable handbook to the mysteries and complexities of Eastern lore. Its pages conjure the mesmerising, magical heart of secret Morocco.” – Tahir Shah, author of The Caliph’s House
About the author: SANDY MCCUTCHEON is an New Zealand born author, playwright, actor, broadcaster and journalist. He has written twenty plays and a number of novels, including Black Widow (2006), which won the Christina Stead Award for Literature. He currently resides in Morocco where he has close ties with a Sufi brotherhood, and has a large online following on his website ‘The View from Fez’ which he runs with his wife, the photographer Suzanna Clark.
