Winner of the Prix Goncourt and chosen by The Seattle Times as one of the Best Books of 2004 "One-Way is a funny and tender look at a world of shifting boundaries...Aziz Kemal is a protagonist for these times."-Sam Lipsyte, author of Home Land "Outrageously funny."-The Seattle Times "Mr. van Cauwelaert has a fine, light touch and makes Aziz the most charming and gentle of liars."-The New York Sun "A mad tale, funny and cruel, tender and inventive, in which all the hypocrisy of our society is put forward without ever becoming heavy-handed."-Les Echos Hailed as a marvel and awarded France's most prestigious literary prize, One-Way recounts the comic, absurd, and all-too-believable adventures of Aziz Kemal, a young Frenchman raised as an Arab by Marseilles gypsies. Arrested for a crime he didn't commit, Aziz becomes the target of a government campaign to repatriate illegal immigrants and finds himself en route to Morocco, despite the fact that he isn't Moroccan. Accompanying Aziz is a touchingly naive and neurotic "humanitarian attache" named Jean-Pierre Schneider, who drowns his own personal woes in his zeal to build a new life for his charge in a land neither one has ever seen. It is on the plane to Morocco that events take an unexpected turn, when Aziz, pressed for details of a "birthplace" that isn't his, invents the fabulous story of Irghiz, a valley paradise hidden from the world and now in danger of ruin. From this moment on, the attache forgets his original assignment and has only one mission: to return Aziz to the Eldorado he left behind and save it from the ravages of modern progress. So begins an initiatory journey that takes Aziz, Jean-Pierre, and a disabused aristocrat across a desert both real and mythic, pursuing a vision of happiness as elusive as Irghiz itself. At once humorous and poignant, the story of this journey is "a beautifully realized blend of sensitivity, humor, intelligence, and good sense--a rich and engaging novel, filled with a lucid and compassionate humanity" (Jean-Claude Lebrun).