Description
KESSEL (Joseph).
Au grand Socco. Novel.
Paris: Gallimard, [1952]. — 16mo, 185 x 120: 318 pp., ((2 leaves, the last one blank), printed cover. Paperback.
First edition.
According to Guy Teissier, a senior lecturer at Tours, this novel is: ‘ a portrait of Tangier, at that time an international city, vividly brought to life by a young Moroccan storyteller, featuring a gallery of swiftly sketched Arab stereotypes and characters from the four corners of the world – from America or the concentration camps of Central Europe, from Ireland or Franco’s Spain. Amidst this strange city pass a few figures of fervent nationalists who, working in the shadows, are preparing Morocco for its impending independence. With feigned naivety, a certain good-naturedness and a keen sensitivity, this work captures the character of Tangier during the final days of its exceptional status: a city that is at once symbolically Moroccan and eclectically international. […] *Au grand Socco* resembles a collection of short stories more than a novel: it consists of a series of episodes, in the style of *The Thousand and One Nights* ’ (Guy Teissier, ‘Joseph Kessel’s *Le Grand Socco* or the Thousand and One Nights of Tangier’, in: *Horizons Maghrébins – Le droit à la mémoire*, 1996, 31–32, pp. 142–147).
One of 110 copies printed on pure-fibre vellum from the Papeteries Lafuma-Navarre (no. 22), the only large-format edition alongside 46 copies on azure-coloured parchment paper.
The spine is slightly soiled; otherwise, the copy is very well preserved.
See original version (French)
Auto-translation. Refer to original language for legal validity.
About the sale
Claude Mozis Library – Black Africa and the African diaspora
Auction location
Auction time
10/21/2026 at 2:00 PM
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