A trip to Morocco changed the course of Samantha Herron’s life. The English author fell in love with Morocco and its culture. Her passion was strong enough for her to study Arabic and live among a formerly nomadic Berber family in the Draa Valley on the edge of the Moroccan Sahara.
Captivated by the ancient tradition of storytelling, which was wide, thriving and persisting amongst the community, she began to transcribe the stories she heard; before finding herself imagining and writing her own
In her first collection of short stories, all taking place in contemporary Morocco, Samantha Herron offers the reader a journey into the hearts and minds of ordinary Moroccans. An intimate perspective of life in this ancient and magical land.
Tahir Shah, author of 'The House of the Caliph' and 'In the Arabian nights', writes: " Samantha Herron has succeeded in doing what many Occidental writers have failed in for centuries - showing Morocco from the inside out. The stories she has so eloquently told are part of the 'real' Morocco... An extraordinary collection, highly recommended."
Tim Mackintosh-Smith, Arabist and author of 'Travels with a Tangerine: A Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Battutah', comments: 'Samantha Herron found some of her Moroccan stories ready-made. Others she imagined or dreamed. In size they are miniatures; but they all express big things on a small scale. Reading them is like peering through a series of keyholes – and, each time, glimpsing something momentary but momentous, instants with life-long consequences. They will make you smile, and shiver. And they will tell you as much truth about their Moroccan setting as a shelf-full of ethnologies.'
Previous work by Samantha Herron include the publication in English and Arabic of 'Dardasha: Immigration testimonies by Moroccan women' (Soul Bay Press 2011), which was produced in association with the Al Hasaniya Moroccan Women’s Centre and featured at Nour Festival 2013.
She also presented some of the stories from this collection as part of The Storytelling Circle at Nour Festival 2014. This is her first work of fiction.
'The Djinn in the Skull: Stories from hidden Morocco ' is to be released on October 23, 2015. The author is expected to give public readings of her story in Morocco and London in 2015 and 2016.
Soul Bay Press is an independent publishing house based in London, Eastbourne and Sydney. It specializes in the publication of emerging authors and old classics that are either out of print or out of copyright. http://www.soulbaypress.com/