DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

Hideous Kinky

Esther Freud author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd

Published:25th Feb '93

Should be back in stock very soon

Hideous Kinky cover

The thirtieth anniversary edition of a twentieth century classic - an unforgettable journey through 1960s Morocco, based on the author's own childhood

For fans of Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals, Laurie Lee's Cider With Rosie and Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love


Quirky, charming and suffused the footloose spirit of the sixties, this is the irresistible story of an English woman who decides on a whim to move herself and her two young daughters to Morocco. The ensuing adventure takes them through richly perfumed markets, dilapidated hotels and mystical Sufi retreats, via friendships and feuds, romances with nomadic street performers, hitch-hiking and nights camping by the coast - all seen through the eyes of a precocious five-year-old girl. Rediscover this transporting modern classic about the spirit of freedom, filled with the sights, smells and textures of twentieth century Morocco.

A tour de force * London Review of Books *
Whimsical, evocative, heartfelt... Synthesizing a blur of images, Hideous Kinky is a song of childhood exile, a paean to the troublesome beauty of life on the run * New York Times *
Funny and appealing... It has a delightful lightness of being * Times Literary Supplement *
Just open the book and begin, and instantly you will be charmed, then intrigued and finally moved by this fascinating story * Spectator *
Genuine and endearing... Esther Freud is adroit at capturing the way adult follies appear to a child [and] she has a gift for unstated hilarity... Like the sword swallowers in the marketplace, she manages to make it look effortless * Los Angeles Times *

ISBN: 9780140174120

Dimensions: 197mm x 130mm x 12mm

Weight: 152g

208 pages