The Arab's Ox: Stories of Morocco

"An intriguing, beautifully crafted exploration of the human heart . . . Ardizzone writes like a poet, with a gift for capturing moments in perfect, elegant images."

--William Rodarmor, San Francisco Chronicle

"More than the sum of its parts, this collection breathes with its artistry, and more importantly through its artistry offers what the best fiction does: the felt human landscape with its terrifying heights and abysses; its oddly shaped and jarring strangeness; the awed realization on your part that, against all rhythm and reason, the artist has taken you home."

--Gloria Naylor, author of The Women of Brewster Place and Mama Day

"In weaving stories of human compassion, Ardizzone has achieved a fiction rich and textured, deserving the highest regard."

--Library Journal

"Tony Ardizzone achieves an intriguingly prismatic effect in his second collection of short fiction. . . . His willingness to penetrate Moroccan culture, rather than paint it as an exotic backdrop for expatriate adventures, makes this collection, which won the 1992 Milkweed National Fiction Prize, refreshingly original."

--New York Times Book Review

"A deeply satisfying collection of fourteen interwoven stories that chart the growing awareness of three strangers set loose in a strange land. Ardizzone mixes a sympathetic psychological acuity with the precise observations of a skilled travel writer. He has taken Henry James's international theme, dipped it in rich North African dye, perfumed it with exotic oils, and draped it in a bright djellaba."

--Boston Review

"Full of masterly writing and teeming with ordinary Moroccan life, this is travel literature of a high order."

--Chicago Tribune