There has never been a more fashionable nor a more instantly exotic destination than Marrakesh. It is a dream landscape, with the steel-blue backdrop of the High Atlas mountains, a hint of the desert, vast, weathered, red orange ramparts, tall tapering palms, orchards of oranges and verdant olives. In the evening, life concentrates on that disordered square of marvels the Djemma el Fna - where storytellers, fortune-tellers and acrobats weave their nightly magic - and the packed, festive alleys of the souk. Marrakesh is modern time-travel, a mystery, and a riddle that can never be fully articulated let alone solved.This book explores this mystique through the researches, speculations and scholarship of forty travel writers who have succumbed to the enchantment of the city. Edited by Barnaby Rogerson, extracts are taken from the works of Elias Canetti, Peter Mayne, Esther Freud, Gavin Maxwell and George Orwell to name a few.