Maghrebi literature in Arabic is shadowed by — and often in conversation with — Maghrebi literature in French. The choice of language has been a perennial political question for North African writers, and many of the most internationally famous Maghrebi authors (Tahar Ben Jelloun, Driss Chraïbi, Assia Djebar, Boualem Sansal) write or wrote primarily in French.
Within the Arabic-language tradition, Mohamed Choukri's For Bread Alone is the foundational confessional text; Ahlam Mosteghanemi is the most popular novelist; Ibrahim al-Koni has built a vast body of Saharan fiction unique in modern Arabic.
Tunisia has a long tradition of literary criticism and historical writing rooted in Zaytuna and the modern University of Tunis; the poet Abu al-Qasim al-Shabbi, dead at 25 in 1934, supplied the lines that became the Tunisian national anthem and one of the rallying cries of the Arab Spring. Libya, despite a small population, has produced writers of the calibre of al-Koni, Ahmed Fagih, and the journalist-novelist Hisham Matar.
