Novel
في الطفولة
Not translated into English
Abdelmajid Benjelloun · 1957
Synopsis
The narrator looks back on his early childhood in Manchester, where his father, a shopkeeper, lived with his wife and daughter: the noisy house of visiting Moroccan families and the calm of the English neighbours he loved, the English school, where his mother forbids him to attend religion lessons, then her illness and death. The family then returns to settle in Fez, where the child, whom his grandfather regards as a foreigner because of his clothes, his haircut and his way of speaking, has to learn to live in a city whose language and customs he does not know.
Context
The text first appeared as a weekly serial in the journal Risalat al-Maghrib in 1949, before being published in book form in 1957; a second part followed in 1968. Moroccan critics compare it to Taha Hussein's Les Jours and Ahmad Amin's Ma vie. Its originality lies in the fact that the West is familiar to the child and the Arab country unknown, and that learning Arabic takes on the value of a conquest. Francis Gouin translated it into French in 1992 for the Wallada publishing house, in Casablanca.
Who it is for
A narrative in literary Arabic, in simple language; translated into French under the title Enfance entre deux rives.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the first autobiography of the Moroccan novel, and the most famous of its author's writings.
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