Down a little side street behind the glittery Rabat Ville train station is a tiny outfit run by an older Moroccan man and his daughter. Both speak English readily and fluently, and run a tight ship - the English Bookshop. The bookshop of my dreams…filled with highly organized used fiction, Islamic studies, women’s studies, Moroccan literature, dictionaries, teaching supplements and guides, hard-to-find African literature, Stephen King paperbacks. I found 6 Milan Kundera books - more than my hometown Barnes and Noble usually has - and Anthony Burgess novels I’d never found before. All of Mohammed Mrabet and Leila Abouzeid’s works were in stock; the rare In Morocco by Edith Warton and Morocco that Was by Walter Harris were there in multiples.

The aisles are crowded and the books are dusty but nevertheless, I think I’ve discovered the best English bookstore in Morocco.

English Bookshop; 7 Rue Al Yamama, Rabat; 037-70-65-93