The Tres Culturas del Mediterráneo Foundation resumes the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the death of Mohamed Chukri and the 40th anniversary of the publication of Plain bread reading the second part of the trilogy about his life. This work will be discussed throughout the month of October in the reading club. Three with books.
Chukri continues in Time for errors The account of his youth. With a direct and poignant writing style, but full of narrative subtleties, the author reveals the years of learning in Larache; those in which he tries to break out of his illiteracy, a life condemned to the marginalization of poverty and crime. But the years of schooling do not represent a radical change; hunger, misery, alcohol, kif, and nights in brothels remain elements from which he will not be able to escape. A life on the edge of the knife. Nights in Tangier and days of school in Larache, two worlds that come together in this novel.
Mohamed Chukri (Beni Chiker, 1935 - Rabat, 2003)
He was born in 1935 in Beni Chiker, a Moroccan town in the Rif. Educated in a poor family, his father's violence forced him to flee and, at the age of eleven, to live on the streets of Tangier surrounded by poverty, violence, prostitution, and drugs. At the age of twenty, still illiterate, he left for Larache to study. During this formative period, he came into contact with literature. In the 1960s, Chukri returned to Tangier, where he continued to frequent bars and brothels, and where he began to write about his personal experiences. His first story, Violence on the Beach, appeared in the magazine Al-Adab in 1966. His literary concerns led him to compare himself with established writers such as Paul Bowles, Jean Genet, and Tennessee Williams, encounters that were recorded in his memoirs (Paul Bowles, the Inmate of Tangier; Jean Genet and Tennessee Williams in Tangier). In addition to his literary production, he also translated into Arabic poems by Machado, Aleixandre, and Lorca, among others. Chukri achieved international success thanks to his autobiographical novel Plain bread (1973); censored as scandalous in Arab countries, it was not definitively published in Morocco until 2000. Time for errors (1992) y Faces, loves, curses (1996), are the other two novels that make up the trilogy of his life. Mohamed Chukri died in Rabat in 2003.
READING PROGRAMME
From October 1 to 8, 2014*
Collection of the copy.
Thursday, October 30, 2014. 18.00 h.
Club reading session. Sharing of the work and exchange of ideas with a cultural critic specializing in cinema, art, and literature Fran G. Matute. Knowing the work and the author, G. Matute currently manages the blog Estado crítico: http://www.criticoestado.es/
Date pending.
Roundtable discussion on the work of Mohamed Chukri.
Free admission until full capacity is reached.
* Dates subject to change depending on the needs of the club.
Reading club organised thanks to the collaboration of Obra Social de La Caixa.
Portuguese