On a Boat to Tangier | Tahar Ben Jelloun | Granta Magazine

On a Boat to Tangier

Tahar Ben Jelloun

Translated by Peter Bush

‘He inspected the chest where the snakes slept. There was the viper, quiet, in a deep sleep.’

Tahar Ben Jelloun

Tahar Ben Jelloun is the author of several novels including, The Sacred Night, which received the Prix Goncourt in 1987. His most recent novel is The Rising of the Ashes. He lives in Paris.

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Translated by Peter Bush

Peter Bush is a translator. His first literary translation was Juan Goytisolo’s Forbidden Territory (North Point Press, 1989) and, to date, Bush has translated eleven other titles in Goytisolo’s bibliography, including The Marx Family Saga and Exiled from Almost Everywhere. He has translated many Catalan writers including Josep Pla, Mercè Rodoreda, Joan Sales, Najat El Hachmi and Teresa Solana. His most recent effort is A Film (3000 meters) by Víctor Català, the classic 1919 feminist novel set in Barcelona’s criminal underworld. Bush lives and works in Bristol.

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