Abdelmajid Sebbata

The novel opens with an investigation into the mysterious death of a university professor in Tangier, Morocco. All preliminary evidence points to suicide in the wake of a scandal surrounding the victim’s sexual harassment of a Spanish doctoral researcher. However, the investigator in charge of the case unearths secrets on campus that cause him to rethink the suicide hypothesis and lead to surprising revelations. The novel also takes us back to the early 17th century when Spanish pirates attack a Moroccan ship, seize a large collection of books and manuscripts belonging to Sultan Zaidan al-Saadi and deliver them to the Escorial library in Madrid. The Moroccans made numerous attempts to retrieve them, including one undertaken by Muhammad al-Ghassani al-Andalusi, the envoy of Sultan Ismail. However all such efforts failed. Then, after the outbreak of the Spanish civil war in the 1930s, the precious works were lost, including a closely guarded manuscript that confirmed that Miguel de Cervantes was not the author of the world renown Don Quixote, a revelation that could turn the history of modern literature on its head. What bearing does this have on the investigation into the mysterious death of the professor? What certainty can we have about the past when so much skepticism surrounds the present?