Gertrude

As Hassan Najmi’s acclaimed novel begins, our unnamed narrator befriends an elderly man, Muhammad, who, as a young man, worked as a tour guide in the city of Tangier. Muhammad tells the narrator about his most famous clients, the renowned Gertrude Stein and her companion Alice Toklas, who—on the recommendation of Henri Matisse—hired Muhammad as their guide when they visited Morocco. Now close to death, Muhammad begs the narrator to take his papers and write his life story.

Soon we learn that...