The Three Cultures of the Mediterranean Foundation concludes the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the death of Mohamed Chukri and the 40th anniversary of the publication of the book Plain bread reading the third part of the trilogy of his life. This work will be discussed during the whole month of November in the book club. Three with books.
Faces, loves, curses closes the trilogy of Plain bread. Chukri's heart-rending, sharp and precise prose is at its best when he recounts the profiles of characters who meet and misencounter each other in the nocturnal geography of Tangiers.
Mohamed Chukri (Beni Chiker, 1935 - Rabat, 2003)
He was born in 1935 in Beni Chiker, a Moroccan village in the Rif. Brought up in a poor family, his father's violence forced him to flee and, at the age of eleven, to live on the streets of Tangiers surrounded by misery, violence, prostitution and drugs. At the age of twenty, still illiterate, he went to Larache to study. It was during this formative period that he came into contact with literature. In the 1960s, Chukri returned to Tangiers, where he continued to frequent bars and brothels, and where he began to write about his personal experiences. His first story, Violence on the beachappeared in Al-Adab magazine in 1966.
His literary interests led him to rub shoulders with established writers such as Paul Bowles, Jean Genet and Tennessee Williams, encounters that were recorded in his memoirs (Paul Bowles, the Tangier inmate y Jean Genet y Tennessee Williams in Tangier). In addition to his literary output, he also translated poems by Machado, Aleixandre and Lorca, among others, into Arabic. Chukri became an 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
- 30 October to 7 November 2014*.
Collection of the copy.
– 26 November 2014. 7 p.m. Mohamed Chukri a secas
To conclude the special tribute that Tres Culturas has paid to Mohamed Chukri, a round table will be organised to discuss the life and work of this unique writer. Juan José Téllez (journalist and director of the Centro Andaluz de las Letras), Javier Valenzuela (journalist and writer) and Rajae Boumediane El Metni (translator) have confirmed their attendance.
- Tuesday, 2 December 2014. 6 p.m.
Reading club session. Sharing of the work and exchange of ideas with the cultural critic specialising in film, art and literature Fran G. Matute. A connoisseur of the work and the author, G. Matute currently manages the blog Estado crítico: http://www.criticoestado.es/ and has commented with Three with books the trilogy.
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. 
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