In Esther Freud`s Hideous Kinky, two little girls are taken by their feckless young mother to Morocco on a `60s pilgrimage of self-discovery. & while she immerses herself in the Sufi religion, her children seek something more solid & stable amidst the shifting desert sands? Bea insists on going to school while the five-year-old narrator dreams of mashed potato. The girl`s explorations & discoveries of Marrakech vividly describe the sights, smells & sounds of Morocco. Their perception & understanding of the different culture, local rituals & customs, diverging from their mother`s quest for personal fulfilment & flight from the grinding conventions of English life. Esther Freud`s vocabulary & tone veer easily from the childlike to the more sophisticated, particularly when she recounts speeches or circumstances beyond a child`s comprehension, & she escapes sentimentality through simplicity. Hideous Kinky is a cheerful autobiographical novel as much about family as about an exotic country seen through an innocent`s eyes. & while the author may not have invented her subject, she has re-created it with a light touch & delicate irony.