The Idiot's Assistant

Twelve-year-old Louie is a timid boy whose preoccupation with imagined fame masks his fear of social interactions and his loneliness. Gaillardia is the street entertainer whose abandonment as a child shapes a life of isolation which he valiantly portrays as self-styled independence. When a mysterious stranger presents Louie with a wondrous gift to help the boy overcome his anxiety of humiliation in the face of others, not even he could foresee the bizarre set of events that brings Louie and Gaillardia together in a strange land with no apparent way back home. Louie must endure the greatest humiliation as Gaillardia's companion -- the idiot whose very life holds the key to deciphering the mystery of their predicament -- if he is to find his way home, or he could accept an offer of real celebrity but lose everything most dear.

"The Idiot's Assistant" is a story about the universal quest to belong, told as a rumpus adventure through a colorful landscape populated by peculiar characters given to vanity and gastronomic excess; they eat a lot, especially foods made of meat.

Maghreb writes with deliciously colorful prose evocative of classic literature mixed with the wonderful weirdness, pageantry and imagery of contemporary circus arts. The feeling is that of a whimsically complicated machine that accomplishes nothing at all -- yet everything. Think Don Quixote in Alice's Wonderland.