The Happy Marriage

A painter in Casablanca suffers a stroke at the peak of his career and is left paralyzed. He comes to believe that his marriage is the sole cause of his decline, and that belief hardens into something close to hatred of his wife.

Confined to his sickbed and desperate to get away from a relationship he considers ruinous, he starts writing a secret book about the marriage. Writing is the only escape left to him.

His wife finds the manuscript. She answers it point by point, setting out her own account of the same events and reading their shared history very differently.

The novel is told in two parts, first from the husband's side, then from the wife's. It is set as legal reforms are about to change women's rights in Morocco, in a society where marriage is still treated as sacred and awareness of those rights is growing.

The question of who is right and who is wrong stays open as the two accounts collide. Each of them begins to suspect that they are less enlightened than they believed.