Books and publications

Index / Activities / Books and publications / Mohamed Choukri: A biography

Mohamed Choukri: A biography

October 25, 20216:00 p.m.
MADRID
Casa Árabe Auditorium (at Calle Alcalá, 62). 6:00 p.m. Free entry until the event’s capacity is reached. Mask use is required at all times.
In Spanish.

Casa Árabe is hosting the presentation of the book “Mohamed Choukri: A hunger for writing” by Rocío Rojas-Marcos. The event will be attended by the author, writer Mohamed El Morabet and Karim Hauser, of Casa Árabe. On Monday, October 25 in our auditorium and our Youtube channel.

Known mostly for his trilogy of memoirs, which began with “For Bread Alone,” Choukri lived a life of hunger in every sense: hunger was his schoolteacher and his biggest enemy, but the hunger he endured in childhood and adolescence, eventually landing him in jail, also encouraged him to embrace writing as a form of salvation. To form this “vida térmica” (or “thermal biography”) Rocío Rojas-Marcos reviews the fascinating episodes which took place in a fast-paced life including mythical personages like Paul Bowles and Jean Genet, showing us the lights and shadows of the man who in “Time of Errors” and “Faces, Loves, Curses” ended up creating one of the great works of Arab narrative using his own life.

“While those of us who have read nearly all of Choukri’s work easily recognize his life, whether narrated or broken down by the author himself, Rocío Rojas-Marcos’ vantage point is valuable in having managed to summarize it, bring together those memory flashes that he left loose in different books and condense his entire life story into in ninety pages,” says writer Sergio Barce about the work. The novel forms part of the “Vidas térmicas” collection put out by the publishing house Zut.

Rocío Rojas-Marcos Albert is a professor at the University of Seville. She holds a PhD in Literature and Aesthetics in the Knowledge Society, a Master’s degree in Creative Writing and a degree in Arabic Philology. She is a member of the research group “Humanistic and Literary Texts: Interpretation and critique” at Pablo de Olavide University in Seville. Her publications include the poetry book “Habitada por palabras” (“Inhabited by Words,” Huerga y Fierro, 2020) and the essays “Tánger. Segunda Patria” (“Tangiers: Second homeland,” Almuzara, 2018), “Carmen Laforet en Tánger” (“Carmen Laforet in Tangiers,” Khbar Bladna, 2015), “Sanz de Soto y Buñuel. La tercera España transfretana” (“The Third Spain Across the Shore,” Khbar Bladna, 2012) and “Tánger. La ciudad internacional" (“Tangiers: The international city,” Almed, 2009). Some of her short stories have been included in “Si Tánger les fuera contado” (“If Tangiers Were Told to Them,” 2014) and “Los conjurados de Tánger” (“The Tangiers Conspirators,” 2019). She was awarded the El Drag Prize by the University of Cadiz for the poetry book “GMTT” (Golf Mark Tango Tango, as of yet unpublished), and the Manuel Alcántara Poetry Prize of 2020 for the poem “Ayer soñé que regresaba a Manderley” (“Yesterday I dreamt I was returning to Manderley”).

Mohamed El Morabet holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and is a regular contributor to several cultural magazines. His first novel, “Un solar abandonado” (“An Abandoned Plot,” 2018), was published by the Sitara publishing firm.
Mohamed Choukri: A biography