Tahar Ben Jelloun’s new novel, Partir, is about young Moroccan men who want to leave everything behind to immigrate. Sound familiar? I think there’s really a Zeitgeist in Moroccan art at the moment around the issue of immigration. Photographer Yto Barrada, filmmaker Yasmine Kassari, and rai musicians have all dealt with the issue in recent work.
Yahoo! news has a brief article (in French) about Partir. No word on an English translation yet. Ben Jelloun’s latest novel to appear here in the U.S. is The Last Friend, which comes out in February.
Who is Laila Lalami
Laila Lalami is the award winning and best selling author of six books.
What books has Laila Lalami written?
Laila has written the novels, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, Secret Son, The Moor's Account, The Other Americans, and The Dream Hotel.
What awards has Laila Lalami won?
Laila Lalami has won the American Book Award, the Arab American Book Award, the Hurston-Write Legacy Award, a Guggenheim a Harvard Radcliffe Fellowship, and a British Council Fellowship. Her work has also been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Booker Prize, the Women's Prize, and the Edgar Allan Poe Award.