Morocco The Islamist Awakening and Other Challenges by Marvine Howe (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 428 pages.)

Abstract

Veteran journalist Marvine Howe’s book on Morocco is unique in its genre.
Though she worked for Radio Maroc and as a stringer for the New York
Times and Time-Life in Morocco from 1951 to 1962, Howe has covered
several topics related to that country since and returned for a serious “Tour
du Maroc” with two old friends in 2001. Her book, with its countless interviews
of political and cultural personalities before and after her departure in
the 1960s, is more than simply journalism. Howe has invested a lifetime of
studying Morocco and its people. This book, addressed to a general audience,
reads like a comprehensive “state of the union” survey of Morocco
today, in its variegated political, cultural, ethnic, religious, and economic
aspects – all in a lucid and often elegant prose. Howe has kept upwith all of the majorworks onMorocco over the years,
both in French and in English, fromJohnWaterbury’s The Commander of the
Faithful (1970) to Fatima Sadiqi’s Women, Gender, and Language in
Morocco (2002). Even the more recent book by Shana Cohen and Larabi
Jaidi, Morocco: Globalization and Its Consequences (2006), shares many of
her conclusions ...