ABSTRACT
The story line is, of course, interesting, but Ben Jelloun's fundamental value resides in his ability to tell an entertaining story, or many stories, in beautiful poetic prose, a stylistic trait characteristic of many Maghribf novels. Intertextual references to the seminal work The Thousand and One Nights are contained in most of Ben Jelloun's novels; and, indeed, The Sand Child and The Sacred Night are heavily involuted frame stories permitting their author both caprice and variety. As in the frame narratives, many of the passages in the two novels could just as easily have been situated elsewhere, in another order. The structure and plotline are less important than the texture and the unit of the tale or chapter that often is an element unto itself.
