Paul Bowles and Edith Wharton

One great writer was Paul Bowles [1910-1999], who moved from the Eastern seaboard to Tangier, Morocco and wrote travelogues. He also wrote novels, stories, music [he was a friend of Aaron Copland] and translate many Moroccan authors.

Be sure to read his travel writing, it's incredible--and it makes you want to read Moroccan authors, not to mention book a plane ticket yourself. Read an excerpt here.

Here's an interview with him about his life. He was beyond avant-garde, to say the least. Here is an excerpt from some of his fiction stories. At his official site, there's lots of information on him here, and here's a quick excerpt from him on Tangier:

[...] You don't look at the city, you look out of it.

The back streets of the Medina, crooked, sometimes leading through short tunnels beneath the houses, sometimes up long flights of stairs, lend themselves to solitary speculative walks. [...]

Edith Wharton also wrote about her travels within her 1920 book In Morocco which you can read here. Here's an excerpt:

But presently we saw why its inhabitants were indifferent to such details. Our host, a handsome white-bearded old man, welcomed us in the doorway, then he led us to a raised oriel window at one end of the room, and seated us in the gilt armchairs face to face with one of the most beautiful views in Morocco. 

Below us lay the white and blue terrace-roofs of the native town, with palms and minarets shooting up between them, or the shadows of a vine-trellis patterning a quiet lane. Beyond, the Atlantic sparkled, breaking into foam at the mouth of the Bou-Regreg and under the towering ramparts of the Kasbah of the Oudayas. To the right, the ruins of the great Mosque rose from their plateau over the river; and, on the farther side of the troubled flood, old Salé, white and wicked, lay like a jewel in its gardens. With such a scene beneath their eyes, the inhabitants of the house could hardly feel its lack of architectural interest. [...]