The Black Crescent

“18 years ago Jane travelled to Morocco for the first time to research her first historical novel, The Tenth Gift – the story of how Barbary corsairs raided Mount’s Bay, Cornwall. The research trip was combined with a rock-climbing trip 700km south and west in the vicinity of the Berber mountain village of Tafraout (fictionalized as ‘Tiziane’ in The Black Crescent). A near-disaster resulted in Jane and her climbing partner getting stuck overnight on a ledge near the top of a mountain. There are no rescue services in Morocco, but she did manage to make a call to the only local number in her phone – the restaurant they’d eaten at the previous evening. She ended up, 6 months later, quitting her job, selling her flat and marrying the recipient of that call: chef and restaurateur, Abdellatif Bakrim.

 

Since then, they have spent part of each year living in Tafraout and Morocco has suffused many of the novels that followed The Tenth Gift (which sold in 26 countries worldwide). Researching The Black Crescent and the fight for Morocco’s independence has been a way for Jane to learn the underlying structures of her adoptive country and its culture and history.  It’s both forward- and backward-looking – highly technologized but also steeped in history that informs every aspect of its culture. A world power in history and one of the richest countries in the world, that power was eked away in dynastic fighting until France made its move for colonization. The French Protectorate left a complex legacy behind: a modern infrastructure of roads, schools, hospitals, bureaucracy & language but also a great deal of inequality, repression & exploitation. Independence was won by both diplomatic and bloody means.”

Background on The Black Crescent provided by Ransom PR