Au grand socco
One of 46 hors commerce copies on blue parchment-style paper (no. XI), this copy nominative for Janine Crespin.
Signed presentation inscription: “Cher Janine, pas besoin de beaucoup de mots n'est-ce pas? Je t'embrasse fort, Jef.”
The copy is accompanied by two manuscripts by Kessel corresponding to the first version of “Le Petit âne blanc” (pp. 84–124 in the Pléiade Œuvres complètes) and the first version of “Le Rezzou” (pp. 74–83 in the Pléiade Œuvres complètes); each appeared in pre-original publication in Paris-Presse–L'Intransigeant between July 1951 and January 1952.
The seven short stories in this collection were written in the summer of 1951: Kessel had settled on the island of Djerba, on the Gulf of Gabès, with a small circle of intimates: his companion Michèle O’Brien and his nephew Maurice Druon.
Druon was its first enthusiastic reader. So taken was he by his uncle’s description that he traveled to Tangier a few months later and had himself driven straight to the city’s great market, the Grand Socco. This “setting for Graham Greene, beautiful but nothing more” had, under Kessel’s pen, become “the Baghdad of the Thousand and One Nights and the Djemaa-el-Fna square of Marrakech”! Druon wrote to him: “My dear Jef, I understand now, I have just been to the Grand Socco. You are a forger. In the manner of Homer!”
A rare Kessel title in the deluxe issue, and probably his finest collection of short stories.
A fine copy with an excellent provenance: Janine Crespin was the wife of Georges Kessel, Joseph’s brother. An actress, she notably played the role of Dame Eliabel de Cressa in the adaptation of Druon’s Les Rois Maudits, the screenplay for which was written by her husband.
From the library of Pierre Bergé (bookplate).