Darkness should be the same everywhere. But it isn’t. This was a desert country. These were desert people. We could feel the difference in the sand under our feet, see it in the brightness of the stars, the shadowed shape of the bare mountains. The chill of it was in our bones. It was as alien as the moon, as cold and naked. And the agony of that death-wailing froze our blood.
(The Strange Land, page 226)

Background

The novel is set in Morocco in the early 1950s. At the start of the 20th century France and Spain had carved out separate spheres of influence over the country. A nationalist party had been founded in 1943 and campaigned for independence. Only in the previous twenty years (from the 1930s) had the south of the country, where the final scenes are set, been ‘pacified’ ie subjected to French colonial rule. Tangiers is an ‘international city’ administered by Spanish officials. The actual inhabitants, the Arabs and the Berbers from the south, are cut off from the Europeans who cover the country like a very thin layer of icing which could be thrown off at any moment. That is the political background to this novel.

The plot

The story is narrated by Philip Latham who runs a Mission at a remote village, Enfida, in the south of Morocco. He had advertised for a doctor to help him and had only one reply, from a Czech based in England named Kavan, who had written to say he is qualified but with little experience, he just needs to get away and start a new life. Since he was the only applicant, Latham confirmed his appointment and acknowledges that Kavan will, rather unconventionally, be travelling to Morocco in a yacht owned by a man called Wade.

The novel opens with the port of Tangiers lashed by a storm as a motley assortment of individuals watch the yacht foundering, failing to make the harbour, and running ashore on the beach A man throws himself into the sea wearing a life jacket. Latham strips off, gets the police to tie a rope round his waist, and swims out to the fast-disintegrating ship to rescue the man they saw.

In the next pages, we learn that:

• the survivor Latham rescued is Dr Jan Kavan, the doctor he’s expecting
• Kavan claims the owner of the yacht, Wade, was washed overboard on the journey out in bad storms
• Kavan is extremely secretive and paranoid; his own wife (Karen) had come to meet him at the beach but they both refused to acknowledge each other – What are they hiding? Who are they hiding from?
• Once safe at Latham’s hotel and recovered, Kavan decides to pretend to be Wade until they can get out of Tangier and into the interior: Why? To avoid awkward questions and being sent back to England as a ‘stateless person’.
• And he reveals that the dead Wade was a crook, caught up in various plots with a local Greek criminal named Kostos, which Kavan – and by extension, Latham – now find themselves embroiled in.

Dr Kavan

Kavan’s backstory is that he is a physicist ie a much-prized commodity behind the Iron Curtain. He was married to Karen before the War broke out, whereupon he was taken away by the Germans to work in Essen. Here he managed to smuggle information out to the British, working with French couriers including one Marcel Duprez. After the War he returned to Czechoslovakia and had two happy years with Karen before the Russians took over, at which point he fled to Britain.

There he is not only a stateless person but becomes a target for the Czech Communists who want him back and try to discredit him to get him deported. They denounce him as a communist to the British authorities, send him secret letters in code which they leak to the authorities, anything to get him deported back to Czechoslovakia.

Hence Kavan’s

• seizing the opportunity to escape from Europe altogether to a remote part of Africa where he can be free
• nervousness about giving his real identity to the authorities in Tangier
• suspicion of even his wife, who he is terrified might have been blackmailed by the communist authorities into meeting him solely to force him to return

Heading south

Having got himself mixed up in Kavan’s elaborate plans, Latham finds himself using his knowledge of the country to smuggle Kavan out via the small local airport on a flight to Casablanca; he himself will catch the sleeper train and they’ll rendezvous there. The disparity in departures gives Latham time to be accosted by Kostos who has with him Ali d’Es-Skhira, a Berber nationalist from the south. Both of them claim Wade was carrying deeds to land in the south which Ali’s tribe desperately need, because it has water and fertile land to grow dates on. They offer Latham a lot of money for the documents. Of course, he doesn’t have them or know anything about them but it makes him suspicious of Kavan.

Latham and Kavan meet up as planned in Casablanca and catch the train south to Marrakesh (Innes does good descriptions of the sights and smells of the busy souk area). But they notice suspicious things – a boy who offers to guide them deliberately loses Latham and decoys Kavan deep into the souk, Kavan swears that a native is following them, and so on. Atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia.

The mission

When they finally arrive by train at Latham’s mission, outside a village in the foothill of the Atlas mountains, they discover a catastrophe has occurred. Just a few days earlier a big landslide buried the entire Mission, the main buildings and dispensary, the playground and olive groves, everything Latham has built up with his own hands over the previous five years. A friend, Graham, a kindly painter, has been killed in the disaster – his sister, Julie, seeing it happen from the safety of the old bus parked a little along the road but powerless to help.

Latham is devastated. He is now a man without a future and – as I’ve noted in reviews of other Innes books – the sense of a settled future is the Holy Grail, the Nirvana towards which all Innes’ books navigate.

We sat in silence after that, drinking tea, wrapped in our own thoughts. For each of us that landslide meant something different. And for each of us the future was uncertain. (p.101)

Confession

Latham finally pushes Dr Kavan to come clean: he didn’t take the job at the Mission at random. Turns out that, when he was doing his forced labour for the Germans during the War, he worked out a way to smuggle secrets to the Allies, using a network of Frenchmen. There was one in particular, Marcel Duprez, working in Europe but who had, before the War, spent many years in the south of Morocco gaining the respect of the local inhabitants and eventually being ceded some land round a village called Kasbah Foum.

As Duprez lay dying, he willed Kavan this land. After the War Kavan corresponded with Marcel’s lawyers to confirm his claim, but was forced to return to Czechoslovakia to work before he could do any more. But as the communist regime became more repressive his one dream was to escape to this Utopia in the desert. Now he is almost there. Will Latham come with him?

This is quite a shock to Latham, who realises he has been used, both in giving Kavan a job he never intended to take, and in breaking the law in concealing Kavan’s identity and smuggling him out of Tangiers. Moreover, the net is closing in. The newspapers are now onto the story that there was a second man on the yacht: they think it was the Wade that Latham claimed to have saved from the sea. Latham finds himself getting deeper into trouble as he has to tell further elaborate lies to the police. And during these interviews he discovers that the Greek Kostos and the nationalist Ali have travelled south in pursuit of him and Kavan.

Together these facts (his lying to the police, Kostos’ pursuit) as well as the devastation of his Mission, persuade him to accompany Kavan on the last leg of his quest south to Kasbah Foum. The sister of the painter horribly crushed under the landslide, Julie, insists she too wants to come along. So the three of them drive high up into the Atlas mountains, through the pass and down into ‘the strange land’ beyond.

Zone of Insecurity

After a vividly described journey through the mountains and desert, our gang of three arrive at Kasbah Foum. It’s a valley comprising two separate settlements each with a kasbah or old castle, a fertile irrigated area and an old mine covered by a landslip.

The existence of this mine is further news to Latham. Only now does it become clear that the whole novel boils down to the rival claims to this oasis and the mineral wealth which may or may not lie beneath it. They discover one Ed White, an American prospector who thought he had the rights to the land, is well-advanced on his plan of using bulldozers to clear the rubble of a rockfall away from the reputed opening to the mine. He had been corresponding with Wade about a deal to develop the mine. Wade had been corresponding with Kostos. Everyone is deceiving everyone else, and poor Latham is the last to realise it.

Who owns the land and the mine? Everyone agrees that the Caid Hassan (the local native leader) gave the land to Marcel Duprez for his services to the community, who then willed it to Kavan. But now it appears that European law doesn’t count – the Caid must re-confirm that gift. This is going to be tricky as he is at daggers drawn with his eldest son – none other than the fanatical Ali, the man who has been pursuing them along with the crook Kostos all the way from Tangiers.

In addition, our gang have to placate the local French authorities in the shape of Captain Legard, who doesn’t believe their (rather convoluted and improbable) story. To add complication, the body of Wade has washed ashore in Portugal but, since the authorities were told it was Wade who came ashore in Tangier, they mistakenly identify the body as Kavan. Which throws suspicion on Kavan-posing-as-Wade that he murdered Kavan-actually-Wade. Complicated.

Back with the Caid and and his son, Ali, there is a tense night-time ‘tea date’ where Kavan and Latham witness the tired old man and the fanatic son arguing over the future of the land, the Caid wanting to honour Duprez’s memory, the nationalist son wanting to keep the land for his people. This ends with the Caid sending a messenger to our gang’s camp with a note confirming the grant – but the messenger is attacked by vassals of Ali, who slash him with knives and he is only saved by the intervention of the Europeans. Slowly the tension is ratcheting up.

The backdrop to all this is that the locals are unhappy: the date harvest has failed, leading to money and food shortages. The American has alienated everyone by using big bulldozers instead of spreading his money around the impoverished community and hiring them as manual labourers. The atmosphere is becoming poisonous.

There are unusually heavy storms. These soften the mud and rocks and help Kavan and White clear the rockslide from the mountainside until they finally reveal the entrance to the historic silver mine. They are naively excited.

But when Latham goes to recruit some local men to help them remove the rocks, he realises the atmosphere has become violent. The heavy rain has turned the stream which meanders through the valley red with mud. The locals think the white men have poisoned it. First they killed the date palms, now they poison the water. The white man must be driven out.

Just as he’s reporting this back to Kavan and White, the Greek Kostas arrives looking harassed and pale, with bad news. The Caid has died. Ali has taken over leadership of the local tribes. He is leading a hundred men or more towards the camp, bent on revenge.

Explosions

And so on to the thunderous climax of the last 40 or so pages: egged on by Ali, the mob arrives at the European camp and start burning our chaps’ tents and sabotaging the bulldozers. Then they turn to menace our heroes. The cowardly Kostos had got separated from them, scrambling up onto a ledge of rock above the only-just-revealed mine working. Whereas our chaps try manfully negotiating with Ali before retreating, the Greek throws a lighted stick of dynamite at the mob – unfortunately, too close to the main store of dynamite – Boom! The whole hillside goes up, causing a massive avalanche, reblocking the mine, sweeping away Kostos, and plunging down onto Ali and his men. When the dust has cleared, the survivors are baying for blood and our gang have to escape further up the gorge and up the mountainside.

Repetition and frustration

I found reading this novel frustrating. Why doesn’t Kavan just tell the authorities who he is (the nominal reason is he doesn’t want to be repatriated to Britain, but he in fact creates much bigger problems for himself masquerading as Wade, who is liable to be charged for murdering Kavan). Why does Latham allow himself to be drawn deeper into Kavan’s deception, which involves lying to every police, immigration and security official he meets? Many of Innes novels convey a nightmare sense of characters unable to escape from repetitive and claustrophobic situations – but here the failure of the main characters just to tell the truth seems wilful and a contrived way to create a permanent sense of tension where there needn’t be one.

Also the rising tension leading to trouble with the natives could be seen a hundred miles off, but the characters seem pitifully, implausibly, slow to appreciate it.

This frustration comes to a head in the scene where – after the dynamite and rockslide has killed loads of natives – the Europeans spend hours climbing up the sheer face of the gorge and over the mountain to the piste out of the valley but then – walk back down to the valley towards the villages! Innes gives a reason – White, their scout, saw ten Berbers on mules going up the piste to the pass – our chaps would probably encounter them and may do badly – but walking right back down the track into the valley where thousands of peasants live whose husbands and sons they have just murdered – is inconceivably stupid of them and frustrating for the reader.

They go to the French Poste and wake up the French official but there’s not much he can do. And while they’re still discussing plans and counting their pitiful little armoury, a crowd of a thousand or so angry peasants, egged on by their womenfolk, march up and surround the Poste. Their ringleaders work them up to a frenzy. They start throwing rocks through the window, then one pokes a gun in and shoots. Looks like it’s going to be a massacre.

Climax

But it isn’t. Our man Latham walks out into the crowd, speaks to them in Berber and outfaces them. Till one shoots him in the shoulder (!), but still, he has planted enough of a seed of doubt to disperse the mob. There’s a stand-off for several hours while our heroes agonise about what to do next.

Then, in a kind of dumb repetition which is very characteristic of Innes, the whole thing happens again: the crowd surging forwards, the menfolk egged on by the women making their terrifying ululations, the rocks and shots through the window. It’s a peculiar fictional technique to repeat virtually the same scene, almost move for move. The Europeans are forced by the baying mob up onto the roof of the Poste and are preparing to meet their end when —

The paternalistic French policeman Legard rides to the rescue. He has ridden hotfoot from Marrakesh after receiving a garbled message before the phone line was cut and now rides straight into the crowd calling individuals by name and defusing the whole situation. Phew! The crowd disperse grumpily and – suddenly it’s a happy Hollywood ending. White and Kavan reckon they can clear away the landslide and reveal the shaft again. The yacht which sank at the start was insured so Kavan-posing-as-Wade should be able to collect a big pot of money. He’ll share the proceeds and help Latham build a new mission. Latham and Julia realise they’re in love. Aaah.

Conclusions

This novel doesn’t work for me.

• I kept expecting the swapped identities theme to turn out to be a clever double bluff but it just carried on being really boring – Kavan pretending he was Wade in innumerable tedious interviews with police authorities all over Morocco.
• Latham is meant to be a missionary and once or twice he prays to God but there was no real feel for the spiritual or numinous anywhere in the book. There’s plenty of travelogue colour description of Casablanca or Marrakesh – but nothing about the real soul of the inhabitants.
• Which raises the biggest problem: with his customary research, no doubt Innes mugged up on and respected the traditions and culture of the people he writes about: but he too often describes them in a patronising way. The final mob scenes (which drag on and on) repeatedly compare the Berbers to animals.

And they scuttled away across the sands in ones and twos, like whipped dogs with their tales between their legs. (p.247)

• The narrator and his pals easily forget that one of their own, a fellow European, has just killed fifty or more of the male wage-earners in this poverty-stricken population. When that happened it changed the entire tone of the book for me. It no longer seemed ‘a bit of a mix-up with a couple of bodies thrown in but hey, the hero gets the girl and all is well’ – which is what happens in most of his other novels. It seemed exploitative to kill off so many of the faceless natives simply for dramatic effect. Bad taste in the mouth.

End of Empire

The storyline seems all-too-aptly to summarise the post-War colonial experience: white men causing untold bother among themselves in their greed for buried treasure (here, silver), while failing to help or support the native populations whose land they exploit, and allowing the moderate older rulers to be swept away by a younger generation of violent nationalists. Much is made that the French colonial officers are struggling to bring a food convoy over the mountain to the villagers. But, with the benefit of hindsight, we know that it will be too little too late for this and scores of other European colonies around the world.

In 1953, presumably while Innes was researching or writing the book, the country had experienced nationalist uprisings, including attacks on Europeans in the street. In 1955, the year after the book was published, the country’s leader Sultan Mohammed V, was overthrown.

Several times the characters mention that the French outpost can’t call on any troops to help put down the mob because there are no French troops stationed in south Morocco. They have all been sent to Vietnam to put down the uprisings there. Premonitions of a world of trouble…

---

Related links

• Hammond Innes Wikipedia article
• Independent obituary
• New York Times obituary
• Hammond Innes book covers on the Bear Alley website

Hammond Innes reviews

• Hammond Innes reviews