Naima Albdiouni
(Antwerp, 1981) in her first novel Voyeur (2009) writes about the hard life in Tangier, where traditional and poor Moroccans and free compatriots educated in the West live together with difficulty. People talk on and on but no one communicates and everyone judges on everything that's different. The main character is Abdullah, who has been released from the infamous desert prison Lmart. One of the central questions in the novel is whether people are really as free as they think they are. Albdiouni debuted with the much-praised story 'F', which appeared in the book of short stories Gelezen en goedgekeurd (Read and passed) and published opinionated columns in De Standaard entitled Te Naima of te laten (To Naima or to leave). For De Buren she wrote a radio book which she read herself. Albdiouni is a translator of French and Spanish and lived in Spain and Morocco for a long time when she studied.
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Wintercafé 1: Godless in Morocco
A programme on rule breaking heart and soul: Berber writer Mohamed Choukri from Morocco. In his autobiographical novel For Bread Alone (1973) he wrote about everything God had forbidden; his youth as a vagabond in Tangier, where he survived in a world of violence, prostitution, alcohol and drugs. When in 1973 For Bread Alone appeared in English, Tennessee Williams called it 'a true document of human desperation, shattering in its impact.' Morocco banned the book until 2000, three years before Choukri's death. Three Moroccan writers talk about the meaning of Choukri for them today: the poet Ali Amazigh, who learned to write in later life, just like Choukri, and who is now writing a confession novel; Naima Albdiouni whose debut novel Voyeur (2008) is also set in Tangier, and columnist Mohammed Benzakour, who, like Choukri, seeks controversy and pursues it. Host: Asis Aynan.
