“Timely and provocatively incorrect."—Oprah.com (Mysteries Every Thinking Woman Should Read)

The two-time Pulitzer Prize and three-time National Book Award-nominated author of Le Divorce returns with a mesmerizing novel of double standards and double agents

Now, Diane Johnson brilliantly exposes the manners and morals of the cultural collision between Islam and the West. Lulu Sawyer arrives in Marrakech, Morocco, hoping to rekindle her romance with a worldly Englishman, Ian Drumm. It's the perfect cover for her assignment for the CIA: tracing the flow of money from well-heeled donors to radical Islamic groups. While spending her days poolside among Europeans in villas staffed by maids in abayas, and her nights at lively dinner parties, Lulu observes the fragile and tense coexistence of two cultures. But beneath the surface of this polite expatriate community lies a sinister world laced not only with double standards, but double agents.

Johnson weaves a dazzling tale in the great tradition of works about naïve Americans abroad, with a fascinating new assortment of characters as well as witty and timely observations on the political and sexual complexities between Islamic and Western culture. “Timely and provocatively incorrect, Lulu in Marrakech is part page-turning thriller, part in-depth examination of gender inequality and the ‘perennial eye infection of colonialism.’"—Oprah.com (Mysteries Every Thinking Woman Should Read)
 
“She has blended her interest in heavier issues with a lightness of touch… Johnson's novel is not only a gripping page-turner—I don't know when I last just plain enjoyed reading a novel as much as this one—but a serious examination of how a "good person" can get involved in some very dark things.”—Martin Rubin, SFGATE
 
“As the bemused observer of a complicated, chatty multicultural social set—and her own complicated romantic yearnings—[Lulu]’s a cool, self-aware delight.”—Entertainment Weekly
 
“Johnson breaks new ground by making her American expatriate a CIA spy in Morocco… As stimulating as Johnson’s previous work.”—Kirkus Reviews