Old Masters in Marrakesh

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A01=James Debens
Art dealer
Art gallery
Art restitution
Art theft
Author_James Debens
Casablanca
Category=FBA
Category=FFH
Category=FJ
Counter-fact artworks
drugs
eq_bestseller
eq_crime
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_modern-contemporary
eq_nobargain
Folkestone
forthcoming
France
Impressionists
Interpol
Jewish
Kent
Marrakesh
Masterpieces
Masters
Mayfair
Morocco
murder
Nazis
Rubens
Van Dyck
Vermeer

Product details

  • ISBN 9781068495847
  • Dimensions: 129 x 198mm
  • Publication Date: 04 Aug 2026
  • Publisher: Afsana Press
  • Publication City/Country: GB
  • Product Form: Paperback
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Max Marwell is caught between running his global art business and dealing with his own past and that of the Jewish people. Born and raised in Linz, Austria, the hometown of Hitler and Adolf Eichmann, he is obsessed with avenging the deaths of his parents and the restitution of looted art by the Nazis. Masterpieces are traced, bought and transported to Casablanca and Marrakesh, involving exciting chases through North Africa and France. Max's adventures entangle him with a murder case, haunted by French police and Interpol. The novel offers a peek into the art world and the way it sometimes overlaps with less salubrious circles.

Set in Morocco and Britain at the end of 1969, the year of UK decimalisation and the Moon Landing, the novel examines how people who are inclusive and forward-looking thrive at these moments of change. At the time, Marrakesh was a meeting point for visionaries like Yves Saint Laurent and romantics looking for a continuation of the summer of love. Internationally renowned art dealer Max Marwell wishes for his son to take over his Mayfair art gallery, but the younger Marwell is an addict. Max is shipping art but also pure heroin within the crated masterpieces; this is so his son does not die from a bad dose. As the world winds into the 1970s, and as Max finds new love and breaks away from vengeance, the world of the Marwells changes drastically

James Debens is a writer and journalist, currently an editor at Newsweek. After his Classics degree at Gonville & Caius, Cambridge University, and journalism postgraduate qualifications at University of London, James joined The Mirror Group, breaking onto the set of the Bond movie, The World Is Not Enough, and interviewing celebrities such as Sir Ian McKellen and Joanna Lumley. James then joined the arts and leisure sections of The Daily Telegraph newspaper, spending years on the party circuit at events for Andrew Motion, Joanne Harris, Dame AS Byatt and many others. James wrote TV previews for the Sunday Telegraph magazine. He then compiled the Critical List for The Sunday Times, including new books, and edited the columns of AA Gill and Germaine Greer. He later was an editor at a trio of magazine publishing houses and worked at The Guardian for a spell before writing catalogues for billionaire investors and articles for Twitter and England rugby. James' debut novel, Where is Your God Now, was published in 2021. Old Masters in Marrakesh is his second novel.

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