The Weird Orient

The Weird Orient gathers nine mystic tales from Henry Iliowizi's years in Morocco and the wider Middle East, where desert legend, mountain mysticism, phantom cities, and sacred dread mingle with daily life. Drawing on local storytellers and scholars in Tetuan, he reshapes Eastern lore into English for Western readers, preserving the native spirit of a world where religion, folklore, and memory are inseparable. The frame includes a cosmopolitan storytelling contest at a casino-like club for travelers and residents, where voices from Europe, North Africa, and Asia compete with tales of wonder, doom, and imperial splendor. Among the most vivid is Yakoub Malek, a Parsee wanderer whose shifting faith and rhapsodic visions carry readers from the Taj Mahal and Shah Jahán's tragic grandeur to the strange tension between belief and modern skepticism. Within this atmosphere of exotic memory and uncanny suspense, the stories move from a storm-lashed Sinai cave and the haunted pursuit of Ali Bey to the immortal Al Zameri's curse, the Exodus, and Solomon's quest for the Shamir and confrontation with Ashmodai. Rich in biblical grandeur, political intrigue, and supernatural peril, the collection offers a haunting journey through the legendary imagination of the Orient. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.