Hot Maroc

With an infectious blend of humor, satire, and biting social commentary, Yassin Adnan gives readers a portrait of contemporary Morocco—and the city of Marrakech—told through the eyes of the hapless Rahhal Laâouina, a.k.a. the Squirrel. Painfully shy, not that bright, and not all that popular, Rahhal somehow imagines himself a hero. With a useless degree in ancient Arabic poetry, he finds his calling in the online world, where he discovers email, YouTube, Facebook, and the news site Hot Maroc. Enamored of the internet and the thrill of anonymity it allows, Rahhal opens the Atlas Cubs Cyber Café, where patrons mingle virtually with politicians, journalists, hackers, and trolls. However, Rahhal soon finds himself mired in the dark side of the online world—one of corruption, scandal, and deception. Longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2017, Hot Maroc is a vital portrait of the challenges Moroccans, young and old, face today. Where press freedoms are tightly controlled by government authorities, where the police spy on, intimidate, and detain citizens with impunity, and where adherence to traditional cultural icons both anchors and stifles creative production, the online world provides an alternative for the young and voiceless. In this revolutionary novel that recalls Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Dave Eggers’s The Circle, Adnan fixes his lens on young Rahhal and his contemporaries as they navigate the perilous and changing landscape of the real and virtual worlds they inhabit.

The history of the modern riot parallels the development of the modern novel and the modern lyric. Yet there has been no sustained attempt to trace or theorize the various ways writers over time and in different contexts have shaped cultural perceptions of the riot as a distinctive form of political and social expression. Through a focus on questions of voice, massing, and mediation, this collection is the first cross-cultural study of the interrelatedness of a prevalent mode of political and economic protest and the variable styles of writing that riots inspired. This volume will provide historical depth and cultural nuance, as well as examine more recent theoretical attempts to understand the resurgence of rioting in a time of unprecedented global uncertainty. One of the key contentions of this collection is that literature has done more than merely record riotous practices. Rather literature has, in variable ways, used them as raw material to stimulate and accelerate its own formal development and critical responsiveness. For some writers this has manifested in a move away from classical norms of propriety and accord, and toward a more openly contingent, chaotic, and unpredictable scenography and cast of dramatis personae, while others have moved towards narrative realism or, more recently, digital media platforms to manifest the crises that riots unleash. Keenly attuned to these formal variations, the essays in this collection analyse literature's fraught dialogue with the histories of violence that are bound up in the riot as an inherently volatile form of collective action.

Contesting the Classroom explores how Algerian and Moroccan novels depict the postcolonial classroom, and how postcolonial literature has been taught in Morocco and Algeria. It argues that Arabized education has indelibly influenced the development of postcolonial novels, which have a deeply fraught yet endlessly creative relationship to the classroom.

Morocco is one of the most fascinating lands in the world from the point of view of its geological structure and evolution. Our knowledge on the geology of the country has been greatly improved during the last decades, based on numerous seismic profiles and boreholes, seismological analysis of focal mechanisms, seismic tomography, gravimetric/geodetic modelling and, on the other hand, based on a big National Program of Geological Mapping including modern geochemical analyses (trace elements) and reliable isotopic datings (39Ar-40Ar, U-Pb zircon, Sm-Nd, etc). Moreover, a number of academic studies have been performed in relation with the increasing number of Moroccan universities. Accordingly, there was an utmost urgency to undertake a new treatise of Moroccan geology which could substitute for the classical Eléments de géologie marocaine, published in 1976 by A. Michard in the Notes et Mémoires du Service géologique du Maroc (re-edited twice since 1976, with more than 6000 copies sold, and... translated in Japanese for engineers!). A new treatise has been prepared between April 2006 and July 2007 under the coordination of A. Michard, assisted by O. Saddiqi, and A. Chalouan, by a wide panel of authors from Morocco, France or Belgium among the best connoisseurs of the country. In order to emphasize the general interest of the book, we finally retain the following title: Continental Evolution: The Geology of Morocco. Structure, Stratigraphy, and Tectonics of the Africa-Atlantic-Mediterranean Triple junction. The editing and production of this book was supported by the following organisations: The Geological Society of France (SGF) The National Office of Hydrocarbons and Mines of Morocco (ONHYM) The International Lithosphere Program (ILP)

In the decades following World War II, French jazz audiences engaged in a process that both challenged and reinforced ideas about their own nation and culture. By negotiating subjects such as youth culture, gender expectations, American consumer society, citizenship, racism, civil rights, and decolonization, the French jazz public expressed important beliefs about France’s place in a fast-changing world and a desire to maintain a strong national identity in the face of globalization.

Morocco’s economy is well diversified, particularly relative to many countries in the MENA region. Tourism is a substantial contributor, generating nearly $6bn (€5.4bn) in annual revenues, as is the agricultural sector, which can be susceptible to variations in rainfall. Manufacturing industries include textiles, automotive and aeronautics, while recent years have seen the expansion of the ICT sector, particularly outsourcing. Investment in ports, transport and industrial infrastructure, and the establishment of a free trade zone, have boosted competitiveness and left the kingdom well-positioned to act a transport hub and business broker across many African markets.

Une radioscopie du Maroc contemporain à travers l’histoire d’un anti-héros, Rahhâl, un personnage fourbe, lâche, envieux, menteur, qui règle ses comptes avec ceux qu’il a désignés comme ”ennemis“ en se servant d’Internet. Sa capacité infinie de nuisance est découverte et appréciée en haut lieu à sa juste valeur, ce qui lui permet d’accéder à la revue électronique Hot Maroc où il distille son venin au profit de ses employeurs.