Morrocan Literature

An immersion into Morrocan literature could start with a non-Morrocan author, Paul Bowles. He moved to Tangiers right after the second world war and lived there the rest of his life. "The Sheltering Sky," an icon of the beatnik generation, was inspired by his fascination with the North African Arab-Muslin culture and the desert's infiniteness. It was also thanks to Paul Bowles's friendship that Mohamed Choukry, one of the greatest Morrocan writers, was able to publish "For Bread Alone," a controversial and later censored novel describing with no filters Choukry's coming of age in the poor environment of a colonized Morocco surrounded by drugs, prostitution, beggars and thieves. If "The Sheltering Sky" inspired a romantic perception of the region, "For Bread Alone" it's an in-your-face description of Morrocan reality. Migration to Europe was the main way out, and Tahar Ben Jalloun is its great storyteller. "The Palace in the Old Village" is simultaneously beautiful and sad, narrating the illusion of an old immigrant who dreams of building a family house back in his hometown. A more combative perspective, however, could be read in "Infidels' by Abdellah Taia, describing the path of a young gay Muslim searching for god and becoming a jihadist, and to conclude, let's not forget that one of the great French contemporary writers, Leila Slimani, the author of "The Perfect Nanny," was born in Morocco. After reading all those novels, a question arose: Will new writers of former colonies living in modern cultural centers continue to preserve their culture, or is the traditional world condemned to be pasteurized? For more book recommendations, you can access the website www.marceloantinori.com