The Charm of Morocco

The Charm of Morocco is the debut travel novel of Ukrainian traveler, writer and photographer Sofia Yablonska, first published in Lviv in 1932. The author spent four months in Morocco, during which she explored and documented Arab Africa. Yablonska’s reportage is deeply personal. Her perspective on the country is free from French colonial influence and the established conventions of the exotic travel novel, despite the fact that she had already lived in Paris for several years before traveling to Morocco. She writes about different layers of Arab society, their relationships with one another and with foreigners, the status of women and the Berber tribes that remained free from European protectorate rule.