The Walls of Villa Fatema

Autobiography, Biography & Memoir

Pages: 272 Ratings:

Book Format: Choose an option

*Your order will be dispatched after the publication date of 19-06-2026

The Walls of Villa Fatema follows the unexpected journey of an American girl who finds herself a guest in a traditional Moroccan family’s home in Casablanca, the port city made famous by the classic film starring Humphrey Bogart.

By turns humorous and unsettling, this memoir by Avery Russell captures Alice’s struggle to navigate – and sometimes ignore – the complexities of a sex-segregated society.

Rich in detail and cultural insight, the book offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of women in 1960s Morocco and explores the tension and fascination that arise when two very different worlds collide.

Avery Russell has lived most of her life in New York City, with fourteen years in Colorado and four years thus far in the home of her birth, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. A graduate of the University of North Carolina, she was on the senior staff of Carnegie Corporation of New York, a general-purpose philanthropy, for thirty years, and wrote or edited many of its reports. After returning from a year or more in Paris following her sojourn in Morocco, she became editor and conference organizer at The Asia Society and the Southeast Asia Development Advisory Group, the latter supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development.