Tahar Ben Jelloun (Arabic:الطاهر بن جلون,romanized: aṭ-Ṭāhir bin Jallūn; born 1 December 1944) is aMoroccan writer who rose to fame for his 1985 novelL'Enfant de sable (The Sand Child). All of his work is written in French although his first language isDarija. He has been nominated for theNobel Prize in Literature.[1]
Tahar Ben Jelloun was born in Morocco in December 1944. As a child, he attended an Arabic-French bilingual elementary school. He then studied in theLycée Regnault inTangier,Morocco, until he was 18 years old. He studied philosophy atMohammed V University inRabat.
After he was a professor ofphilosophy inMorocco, he joined the group that ran the literary magazineSouffles in the mid-1960s, and he wrote many pieces for the cultural magazine. He later participated in the student rebellion against the repressive and violent acts of the Moroccan police. In 1966, he was forced into military service as his punishment.
Five years later, his first poems were published inHommes sous linceul de silence (1971). Shortly thereafter he moved toParis to studypsychology, and in 1972 began writing forLe Monde. He received his doctorate insocial psychiatry in 1975.
In January 2003, Ben Jelloun was nominated one of the two candidates for the 16th seat of theAcadémie Française,[2] the moderating body of the French language.[3] This seat was last held byLéopold Sédar Senghor. A month later, Ben Jelloun ended his campaign for the position.[4]
Today, Ben Jelloun is known for his literary career but also his appearances on French media outlets in which he speaks about the experiences of people of North African descent living in France.[5] He lives in Paris and continues to write.
Ben Jelloun's 1985 novelL’Enfant de Sable (translated asThe Sand Child) brought widespread attention. In 1987, he received thePrix Goncourt for his novelLa Nuit Sacrée (The Sacred Night), which made him the firstMaghreb author to receive the award.
His 1996 novelLes raisins de la galère (The Fruits of Hard Work) is a reflection onracism and traditional Muslim ideas about a woman's place. Theprotagonist, Nadia (a young French woman of Algerian origin), fights racism and exclusion to find her place in French society.
In 1993, he received the journalistic awardGolden Doves for Peace, issued by the Italian Research Center Archivio Disarmo.[6] Ben Jelloun was awarded theInternational Dublin Literary Award forCette aveuglante absence de lumière (This Blinding Absence of Light) in 2004. In 2005 he received the Prix Ulysse for the entire body of his work.
Ben Jelloun has written severalpedagogical works. His first isLe Racisme expliqué à ma fille, translated asRacism Explained to My Daughter (1998). The text is an educative tool for children and is the main reason for him being regularly invited to speak at schools and universities. His text is addressed to his own daughter, but he is actually writing to all French children who are troubled by complex but important topics that surround racism.[7] He argues that the primary solution to solve racism in France is through education, specifically education starting at a young age.[8] He also makes the connection betweencolonialism and racism in a way that is understandable to his young audience by explaining that colonialism is a type of domination and power that aids racism to exist at the state level.[9]
He also has writtenL'Islam expliqué aux enfants, translated asIslam Explained (2002), andLe Terrorisme expliqué à nos enfants, translated asOn Terrorism (2016) in response to the 1990s protests against French immigration laws,[10][11] theIslamophobia following theSeptember 11 attacks in theUnited States, and theNovember 2015 Paris attacks,[12] respectively.
^Ben Jelloun, Tahar, Racism Explained to My Daughter. New York: New Press, 1999. Ben Jelloun, Tahar, Racism Explained to My Daughter. New York: New Press, 1999.
^Ben Jelloun, Tahar, Racism Explained to My Daughter. New York: New Press, 1999.
^Ben Jelloun, Tahar, Racism Explained to My Daughter. New York: New Press, 1999.
Grand Officer,Legion of Honour (2008)
