KESSEL (Joseph). Au grand Socco. Novel. Paris: Gallimard, [1952]. — In-16, 185 x 120: 318 pp., ((2 ff., last page blank), printed cover. Paperback. First edition. According to Guy Teissier, a lecturer at the University of Tours, this novel is: “ a portrait of Tangier, at that time an international city, vividly presented by a young Moroccan storyteller, featuring a gallery of quickly sketched Arab stereotypes and characters from the four corners of the world—from America or the concentration camps of Central Europe, from Ireland or Franco’s Spain. Amid this strange city pass a few figures of fervent nationalists who, working in the shadows, are preparing Morocco for its coming independence. With feigned naivety, a certain good-naturedness, and keen sensitivity, this work captures the character of Tangier during the final days of its exceptional status: a city that is at once symbolically Moroccan and eclectically international. […] *Au grand Socco* resembles a collection of short stories more than a novel: it consists of a series of episodes, in the style of *The Thousand and One Nights* ” (Guy Teissier, “Joseph Kessel’s *Le Grand Socco* or the Thousand and One Nights of Tangier,” in: *Horizons Maghrébins*—*The Right to Memory*, 1996, 31–32, pp. 142–147). One of 110 copies printed on pure-fiber vellum from the Papeteries Lafuma-Navarre (no. 22), the only large-format edition, with 46 copies on azure-colored parchment paper. The spine is slightly soiled; otherwise, the copy is in very good condition.