Choukri did not learn to read or write until he was twenty. al-Khubz al-Hafi (For Bread Alone, 1972), an autobiographical novel of his early life as a street child and small-time criminal in Tangier, was first published in Paul Bowles's English translation; the Arabic original was banned in Morocco until 2000.
The book is one of the unsparing texts of modern Arabic literature — frank about hunger, sexual violence, and prostitution in a way that mainstream Arabic prose had avoided. It became, alongside its sequels Time of Mistakes (1992) and Faces (2000), a foundational document of Maghrebi self-narration.
Recurring themes
Tangier in the international zone
self-taught literacy as autobiography
poverty, prostitution, and the body
the Maghrebi confessional
Selected works
- 1972For Bread Alone
- 1985The Tent
- 1973Jean Genet in Tangier
- 1992Time of Mistakes
- 2000Faces