Tahar Ben Jelloun

Biography

In 1987 the jury of the Prix Goncourt awarded the prize to “The Sacred Night”, and Tahar Ben Jelloun became the first writer from Morocco to receive it. The book was a sequel to “The Sand Child” (1985), the novel that had made him widely known.

He was born in Fez. Sources disagree on the date: 1 December 1944 is the one most often given, but 1 December and 15 December 1947 also appear. His first language was Moroccan Arabic (Darija), yet he began to write in French. His primary school was bilingual, Arabic and French, and he then studied at the French Lycée Regnault in Tangier until about the age of eighteen. He studied philosophy at Mohammed V University in Rabat.

In the mid-1960s he joined the circle around Souffles, a Moroccan literary and cultural magazine, wrote for it, and began with poetry. By one account he was drafted into the army in 1966 as a punishment for taking part in student protests; by another, he was arrested that year together with dozens of other students. The sources differ here, and I would not try to settle the details. Later he taught philosophy in Morocco.

His first collection of poems, “Hommes sous linceul de silence” (“Men Under a Shroud of Silence”), appeared in 1971. That same year, after the teaching of philosophy in Morocco was switched to Arabic, he left for France. In Paris he took up psychology, and from 1972 he wrote regularly for the daily Le Monde. In 1975 he defended a doctoral thesis in social psychopathology.

His experience as a psychotherapist and his interest in the lives of immigrants show in his books of the 1970s: “La Réclusion solitaire” (1976) and “La plus haute des solitudes” (1977). The second grew out of his thesis and described the loneliness of North African workers in France. For many years his readership was small but loyal, and in 1976 his collection of poems “Les amandiers sont morts de leurs blessures” (“The Almond Trees Died of Their Wounds”) won the Franco-Arab Friendship Prize.

The success of “The Sand Child” changed his position. He said in an interview that his writing itself did not change, but his sense of a writer’s responsibility to the reader did. His manner is close to storytelling: he considered this kind of narration the most natural for him and recalled learning a great deal from street storytellers. The two novels have been translated into more than forty languages.

In 2001 came “This Blinding Absence of Light”, about Tazmamart, the secret prison where, under King Hassan II, military men implicated in a plot against him were held. It was based on the account of a former prisoner, Aziz Binebine. Another former prisoner, Ahmed Marzouki, author of “Tazmamart, cellule 10”, reproached the writer for keeping silent about repression for years and for writing the book for commercial reasons. Ben Jelloun replied that he had stayed silent for the safety of his family in Morocco and to keep the chance of returning home, and that he shared the proceeds with Binebine. The dispute was discussed at length in Morocco and in French-language literary circles. In 2004 the English translation won the International Dublin Literary Award (IMPAC).

In 1998 he published “Racism Explained to My Daughter”, followed by “Islam Explained” (2002) and “On Terrorism” (2016), the last two likewise written for children. He is regularly invited to speak at schools and universities. In 2003 he put himself forward for seat 16 of the Académie Française, formerly held by Léopold Sédar Senghor, but withdrew a month later. In 2008 he was elected to the Académie Goncourt, the body that awards the Prix Goncourt. His other honours include the Golden Doves for Peace prize (1993), the Prix Ulysse for his whole body of work (2005), the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize (2011) for his essay on the Arab uprisings, the Argana International Poetry Prize (2010), and honorary doctorates from the Catholic University of Louvain (1993) and the University of Montreal (2008). He is an officer of the French Legion of Honour (2007 or 2008, sources differ) and a commander of the French National Order of Merit (2012). An asteroid has been given his name.

He also draws. In 2017 the mayor of the commune of Le Thoureil asked him to design stained-glass windows for the village church. Ben Jelloun agreed, with Matisse in mind, and said that dialogue between religions mattered to him. The windows were made by Philippe Brissy, a master glassmaker from Saumur.