The last friend

by Tahar Ben Jelloun

"Tangiers, the late 1950s. Two teenagers, Mamed and Ali, strike up an intense friendship that will last a lifetime. But lurking just beneath the surface is a deep, unspoken jealousy in danger of destroying them both. Decades later, the two friends, wiser and world-weary, offer differingaccounts of their relationship's twists and turns, from their rebellious youth spent subverting the rigid moral strictures of the day to harrowing months spent together as political prisoners, and their eventual settling into conventional family lives. Only then do the real differences between them emerge, culminating in an unimaginable and unforgettable act of betrayal."--Jacket.