The Caliph's House, (Paperback)

from debnance

Tahir Shah wearies of London and its safe banality. He finally convinces his pregnant wife to buy a disaster of a mansion in Morocco and relocate there with their young daughter. From the beginning, their adventure feels doomed. Cats are found hanging by ropes from trees, strangled. The next door...

from Stevejm51

Tahir Shah's memoir is a fascinating glimpse into the every day life of an family living in a rundown mansion in Casablanca. Tired of the dull gray life of London, Shah buys a rambling home and moves his family into one of the mansion's rooms. He contracts with architects and artisans to renovate...

from nemoman

Shah tires of London's dreary climate. He decides to pack up his family and move to Morocco. His grandfather had lived in Tangiers and he remembered exotic vacations as a boy driving through the Atlas Mountains. After looking in Fes and Marrakesh, he locates a fixer-upper in Casablanca, known loc...

from breic

A quick, fun read. It's basically the story of a big home remodel, so there is not a lot of substance. There is some humor, and a light impression of Moroccan culture, but not enough of either. Unfortunately, there aren't good portraits of any of the other characters, neither in Shah's family nor...

from bkswrites

Another amusing collection of anecdotes, and I did learn a lot about Moroccan (or at least Casablancan) culture. But there's no real story to follow, and the anecdotes are too self-centered. Since Shah took his whole family to live in Dar Kalifa, including a very young baby, I wanted to know how ...