While the literary prize season is in full swing in France, with Moroccan authors in the limelight, a new literary prize is being launched in Morocco. It’s a wonderful venture in a country where, unfortunately, literature is still a bit of a poor relation.
You only have to look at the limited space reserved for fiction and poetry at the Book Fair, where technical and religious books take up the lion’s share, accounting for over 70% of the exhibition space. Or to see, in the rare bookshops, literature sections reserved for publications of classics, again ‘for school’, or the very latest paperbacks. I confess that I only became aware of this Moroccan specificity during a trip to Algeria, when I once again saw numerous bookshops in the streets of Algiers where all I wanted to do was take a long plunge into the shelves! It could be said that Morocco has music and cinema, but that reading is not valued. Few Moroccan writers achieve real recognition without being ‘exported’ in one way or another.
This is reflected in the number of authors who have won prestigious literary prizes. Almost without exception, they are all published abroad, and French publishing houses do more for the reputation of Moroccan literature than the few Moroccan publishing houses that manage to publish some very fine texts.
Literary prizes and Moroccan literature
Maghreb literature was given pride of place this year, with the Goncourt Prize awarded to the Algerian Kamel Daoud for ‘Houris’ and the December Prize awarded to the Moroccan Abdellah Taïa for ‘Le Bastion des larmes’ (The Bastion of Tears). Abdellah Taïa was shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt, as was Ruben Barrouk, a Moroccan Jew recounting his return to Marrakesh in the footsteps of his grandmother.
These two books are published in France because they are unpublishable in their countries of origin. Moreover, Gallimard, Kamel Daoud’s publisher, was banned from the Salon du Livre in Algiers. As for Abdellah Taïa, his themes are still causing a scandal in Morocco.
In previous years, writers such as Tahar Ben Jelloun – who is now on the jury for this prize – or Leïla Slimani have also won the prestigious Goncourt, or the Goncourt for Poetry, like Abdellatif Laâbi. Other prizes have also been awarded to Driss Chraïbi.
As for Laila Lalami, she writes in English and has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Awards.
(Of course, due to historical reasons, most of Moroccan writers write in Arabic or French, only a few of them choose English or Amazigh).
The authors who receive these prestigious prizes are published abroad, either because they left to avoid censorship or because their careers took off across the Mediterranean. Quite simply because a literary prize is awarded to the ‘protégé’ of a French publishing house.
Moroccan literary prizes
However, there are also Moroccan literary prizes, which are unfortunately not as well known. Have you ever heard of them? They are :
- the Prix du Maroc du livre, created in 1962, with a prize of 70,000 dirhams, which rewards authors in all fields (science, history, sociology) and not just literary creation;
- the Arganier literary prize, awarded by French secondary school students in Morocco, which rewards both Moroccan and foreign authors;
- the Orion Maroc Prize, created in 2023 by the Orions publishing group, which also extends its categories to the sciences, beyond literature per se.
We should also mention for the record the now defunct Mamounia Literary Prize (2009 – 2016) and the Moroccan version of the Sofitel Literary Prize, under the name ‘Sofitel Tour Blanche Literary Prize’ (2012 – 2017).
The Abdelmalek Laroui Prize
A new prize has been added to this short list this year, the Abdelmalek Laroui Prize, which aims to reward a lesser-known Moroccan author writing fiction or poetry in French, Arabic or English.
Endowed by Rkia Laroui, the prize is first and foremost a tribute to her father, Abdelmalek Laroui, a man thanks to whom the intellectuals of the Laroui family (Fouad Laroui, Abdellah Laroui and others) have been able to become what they are today.
The first Abdelmalek Laroui Prize was awarded on 16 November 2024 to the late Jamal Boushaba, a French-language writer for his poetry collection ‘Champs de Nuit’, who was also a Moroccan journalist and critic of modern and contemporary art.
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