The Weird Orient: Nine Mystic Tales

The collection presents nine mystic tales drawn from Middle Eastern and North African oral lore, retold by a writer who gathered material during residence in Tetuan and elsewhere. Individual narratives blend desert and mountain settings, supernatural phenomena, and moral and psychological dilemmas, taking the form of vanished cities, enchanted palaces, demonic encounters, exiled deities, and a wandering-soul legend. The prose preserves local color and legendary detail while arranging the stories into atmospheric sketches that emphasize mysticism, fate, and the uncanny, often grounded in traditional religious and folkloric motifs and mediated through a reflective narrator who frames the lore for a Western readership.