LULU IN MARRAKECH
by Diane Johnson

My friend Diane Johnson accuses me of spending my time schmoozing in cafés while she has to work for a living. Since there has been a five-year gap between her last novel and Lulu I suspect that she has spent her share of hours soaking up Paris from a café terrace.

After concentrating her talents on Paris in Le Divorce, Le Mariage, L’Affaire and the monograph Into a Paris Quartier she has turned her attention to the former French protectorate, Morocco and specifically exotic and international Marrakech.

LULU IN MARRAKECH is the story of Lulu Sawyer, an American who has moved to Morocco to rekindle her romance with Ian Drumm, a worldly Englishman. This is the perfect cover for her assignment with the CIA to trace the flow of money from wealthy donors to radical Islamic groups. 

Lulu hobnobs with the well-to-do from Europe and the Middle East, in villas staffed by maids in abayas, where she observes the fragile coexistence of cultures which is beginning to fragment. Beneath the surface of this polite expatriate community lies a more sinister world laced not only with double standards, but with double agents.

The more Lulu immerses herself in the workings of Marrakech, the more questions emerge; and when one of Ian’s factories is burned to the ground, the danger is palpable. As she pursues her ambiguous CIA objectives, Lulu stumbles into unforeseen intrigues: A young Muslim girl, Suma, is hiding from a brother intent on an honor killing; and a beautiful Saudi woman, Gazi, who is vying for Ian’s love, leaves her husband in a desperate bid to escape her repressive society, and a quiet, young Moroccan maid is taken into police custody, never to be seen again. 

As in all of her work Mme. Johnson has a clear understanding of the cultural differences and frictions created by the introduction of an alien culture into a homogeneous environment: North Africans and Americans in France and Europeans and Americans in Morocco. Please join us at the Hotel Madison, Paris for an in-depth discussion of Mme. Johnson’s life and career.