ABSTRACT

Tahar Ben Jelloun was born in Fès, Morocco, in 1944, twelve years before the country became independent from the French. He attended the lycée français of Tangier from 1954 to 1962. It is important to note these dates because of their significance for the Maghreb, for the Maghrebian people, and particularly here, for what they might have meant to most ten-to-eighteen-year-olds at that time and in that part of the world, specifically to Tahar Ben Jelloun. He later insisted that writing is always intimately connected to the political situation, in this case decolonization movements and struggles, and later on to mistreatment of the North African immigrant in France, as we shall see. Indeed, just a month or two after he had started attending the lycée français of Tanger, on November 1, 1954, neighboring Algeria, determined and uncompromising, launched a long fight for independence against the 132 years of French presence and colonialism. In fact, the endurance and effective strategies of the Algerian people lasted the whole time Tahar Ben Jelloun was attending the lycée français of Tanger, until independence on July 1, 1962. In the meantime, 1956 marked the end of the French Protectorate at home (since 1912) and in neighboring Tunisia (since 1881). Thus by the time Tahar Ben Jelloun was eighteen and graduating from high school, Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia were newly independent countries.