What's the literary side of Morocco (Tangier, Paul Bowles, the Beats)?

Morocco, and Tangier above all, has an outsized place in 20th-century literature, and tracing it is a wonderful, low-key way to see the city for anyone who loves books. In the mid-century decades when Tangier was an "International Zone" — a freewheeling, tax-light, anything-goes port jointly administered by several powers — it became a magnet for writers and artists drawn by cheap living, the light, and the sense of being on a crossroads between worlds. The result is a literary geography you can still walk.

The presiding spirit is Paul Bowles, the American composer and author of The Sheltering Sky, who lived in Tangier for over half a century and, with his wife Jane Bowles, made it a hub. They drew a remarkable cast: William S. Burroughs lived here while writing the manuscript that became Naked Lunch, and the Beat writers — Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso — came to visit and help assemble it. Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Jean Genet, the Rolling Stones and the painter Francis Bacon all passed through, and Bowles famously recorded and championed Moroccan Gnawa and Jajouka musicians and translated Moroccan storytellers like Mohamed Choukri, author of For Bread Alone.

On the ground, the essential pilgrimage stops are easy to string together. Café Hafa, perched on the cliffs above the Strait with Spain across the water, has served mint tea since 1921 and was beloved of Bowles, Burroughs and the Beats — sit on its tiered terraces and you understand the spell. The Librairie des Colonnes on Boulevard Pasteur is the legendary bookshop that was the writers' salon. The Hotel El Muniria, where Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch, and the bars of the old town complete the Beat circuit, while the Petit Socco and Grand Socco squares were the cafés where everyone gathered.

Don't miss the Tangier American Legation Museum in the medina — a beautiful old building that was the first American public property abroad, now a museum and cultural centre with a fine room devoted to Paul Bowles and Tangier's literary expatriates. To make a trip of it, base a couple of nights in Tangier, walk the medina and the Kasbah with their sea views, do the literary café-and-bookshop crawl, and read a little Bowles or Choukri beforehand — the city reads completely differently once you know its stories.