[1][2][3] The novel centers around Muhammad, an educated Moroccan in his thirties living in Torremolinos, Spain.
Two friends, also Moroccan emigrants, involve him in a scheme to smuggle cannabis from Tangier.
[3] The style of The Woman and the Rose is disorganized and labyrinthine, departing from the previous conventions of Moroccan literature in its use of multiple narrators and reliance on symbolic and aesthetic imagery.
[2] Zafzaf's stylistic innovations respond to the literary critiques of figures such as Abdallah Laroui, Abdelkebir Khatibi, and Mohammed Berrada, while also allowing him to level subtle criticisms at the social structures of postcolonial Morocco.
Other critics have praised his "frenzied affirmation of the body", a theme which sparked a new trend in Moroccan literature.