by Tahar Ben Jelloun

Born in Fez in 1944, Tahar Ben Jelloun attended the French lycée in Tangier, where he moved with his family at the age of 18. He went on to study at the University of Morocco in Rabat and participated in the publication of the radical political review Souffles. After graduating, Ben Jelloun taught philosophy in Tetouan and then in Casablanca. During this time he published his first poems and a novel, Harrouda (1973). Afterwards he studied social psychiatry in France, writing his doctoral dissertation on case histories of North African immigrant workers. He worked with North African immigrant patients for three years at the Dejerine Center for Psychosomatic Medicine, basing his second novel, Solitary Confinement (1976), on this work. A poet, novelist, essayist, journalist, and playwright, Tahar Ben Jelloun frequently speaks out against injustice, racism, and discrimination against North Africans and Palestinians. In...