Granddaughter to a proud Berber king, Fatéma Oufkir was married at 16 to a dashing French Army officer who was a close advisor to Hassan II. Until his death in 1999, King Hassan was Morocco’s absolute monarch for nearly 40 years. In his proximity the Oufkirs led a life of royal extravagance and seemingly unlimited privilege. General Oufkir held the key to nearly every door in the corridors of power. Then life was turned upside down. Accused of fomenting a coup against Hassan, Oufkir was murdered (termed a “suicide”) in 1972; Fatéma and her children were thrown into prison, where they spent nearly two decades. Her daughter Malika’s Stolen Lives offered a chilling and moving account of their fate. In the Garden of the Kings brings us Fatéma’s story—the perspective of a mother and widow trying to reconcile what life had been and the nightmare it had become; struggling to raise and educate her children; managing against huge odds simply to maintain her dignity and sanity: Fatéma Oufkir is a woman who had everything, then lost it all.

This courageous book is primarily a testimony to her will to survive, a trait she bequeathed to her children. Yet it transcends heartache to offer the story of her country during the last half century—by someone who witnessed its transformation from French protectorate to independent nation to struggling democracy. Fatéma Oufkir’s Morocco was first a paradise, then a prison; today, with a new king on the throne, it may become a place of hope in a troubled part of the world.

Malika Oufkir, whose new book Freedom: The Story of My Second Life was recently published here, has offered to write a preface to her mother’s book.