BOOK THIS: Tangier
Stay at a gorgeous hilltop mansion built by the real-life Indiana Jones, and read the little-known Paul Bowles novel about Tangier's bohemian elite
WHAT TO READ: Let It Come Down by Paul Bowles
Bowles' second novel, Let It Come Down, is set among the Tangier elite ("Tangerinas") and has a fish-out-of-water American protagonist but there's more drugs, more parties, and more corruption than in The Sheltering Sky — think Less Than Zero meets Casablanca. Bowles' spare stylized prose packs a wallop: he doesn't go heavily into description but with a cafe called Lucifer, he doesn't have to. And in true Bowles fashion, just when you think you're having fun, there's a bit of nihilism to remind you where you're headed: "If you let yourself have a really good time, your health goes to pieces, and if your health goes, your looks go. The awful part is that in the end, no matter what you have done, no matter how careful you may have been, everything falls apart anyway."
WHERE TO STAY: HOTEL JOSEPHINE
Long a magnet for aesthetes, eccentrics, writers, painters, and more than a few nefarious wanderers, Tangier is a town whose life force derives from its history — and if there was a hotel for Paul Bowles' expat sophisticates, the Villa Josephine would be the place. Perched on a promontory in Tangier’s fancy Vieux Montagne — just ten minutes from downtown — it was built in the early 1920s by writer/explorer/bon vivant Walter Harris (the real-life inspiration for Indiana Jones) and subsequently owned by the Pasha of Marrakesh who used it as his summer house. With just eleven guest rooms (most with a view to the sea, some with terraces), this grand French country house has an air of intimacy that makes it still feel like a private home. The Belle Epoque architecture and furnishings are given an extra frisson from the saturated North African palette which deepens at dusk to a bewitching richness.
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Written by Lisa Borgnes Giramonti and Meghan McEwen, IN HAND is part travelogue and part travel ethos — exploring the intersection of design, craft and travel; celebrating people, places and objects.