Writer John Fowles, author of the prologue to this edition, says of Ourika: "My particular relationship with this strange novel that prologue here began 32 years ago in Mr. Norman's bookstore. Ourika, showed the cover, Paris, 1824. There was no mention of the author, the copy was in very bad condition, and I did not expect a great reward for the five shillings, a dollar at that time, which I paid for him. If I was willing to pay even that was for having glanced at the first sentence. One of the things I learned in this bookstore is that I am crazy about the narrative, real or imaginary. It has become for me the quintessential art of the novelist, and I liked the abrupt and immediate immersion in the history of Ourika. "However I thought I would end up disappointed, which I had done with an insipid nouvelle inscribed in the Marmontel tradition; A work of didactic morality dyed by a diluted romanticism, a sterile purchase even for someone with my stubborn attitude of magpie against the collection of books. I took the book bound in green marbled paper and a part with worn black skin, I went home and sat down to corroborate my fears. Long before I finished, I knew that I had run into a little masterpiece. "I reread it almost immediately and I have done it several times over the years. Even my admiration for Ourika has increased, and more than I thought. I chose the name of the hero of my novel The Woman of the French Lieutenant quite liberally, or so I thought back then. It took me a great surprise, months after my manuscript had been sent to the press, when one day I opened Ourika and realized that Charles was also the name of the main male character. It made me think. And although I could swear that I never had in mind the African presence of Ourika herself when I wrote The French Lieutenant's Woman, I am now sure, retrospectively, that she was very active in my unconscious."