Al-Koni was born to a Tuareg family in the Libyan desert and learned Arabic only at the age of twelve. He has lived in Switzerland for decades but has never written about anywhere except the Sahara. His Tuareg world is rendered with a density of myth, animal life, and pre-Islamic spirit-belief that is unique in modern Arabic fiction.
Nazif al-Hajar (The Bleeding of the Stone, 1990), al-Tibr (Gold Dust, 1990), the Mawasim quartet, and the long sequence of Sahara-set novels and novellas have made him perhaps the most prolific living Arabic novelist. He has won the Egyptian State Prize, the Sheikh Zayed Book Award, and the Mohammed Zafzaf Award; his books appear in more than thirty languages.
Recurring themes
the Sahara as cosmology
Tuareg myth in Arabic
animal lives
the pre-Islamic substrate of North African religion
Selected works
- 1990The Bleeding of the Stone
- 1990Gold Dust
- 2003The Seven Veils of Seth
- 2002Anubis
- 1999New Waw
- 1998The Puppet
- 1992The Fetishists