Mohammed Choukri

Moroccan Author

From a profile and interview by Ludmilla Biebl as published in Spitting Image No. 2...

Mohammed Choukri is considered the Charles Bukowski of Morocco. His books For Bread Alone, The Tent, and Jean Genet in Tangierhave been translated into ten languages. (In the U.S., he is best known for the City Lights edition of [his autobiography] For Bread Alone, translated by Paul Bowles.) He writes with unflinching candor about himself and those he knows best: the poor, the hustlers, the drunks, and the prostitutes in the streets of Tangier, the city he refers to as his beloved mistress - "no matter how badly we treat each other."

[...]

LB: You are an outspoken atheist. A dangerous position here. Aren't you afraid to become a victim of the Islamic fundamentalists?

MC: There is no point in being afraid. If it happens, it happens.