Born in the coastal city of Salé in 1973, Abdellah Taïa studied French literature in Rabat before earning a doctorate with a thesis on the libertine novel at the Sorbonne in Paris, where he has lived since 1999. In 2006, he became the first Moroccan writer to publicly acknowledge his homosexuality. The experience of growing up gay in a country where same-sex relationships are illegal has marked not just his fiction but also the films he has made. In December, the organisers of the Marrakesh International Film Festival scrapped a Q&A session scheduled to occur after a screening of his film Cabo Negro for fear of recrimination.

In Living in Your Light, which was published in French in 2022 and shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt, Taïa turns the lens away from himself and onto his mother, on whom the central character, Malika, is based. The dedication reads: ‘For my mother, M’Barka Allali (1930–2010). This book comes entirely from you. Its heroine, Malika, speaks and shouts with your voice.’ 

Malika tells her life story in three parts, taking the reader on a journey from 1954 to the cusp of the new millennium. The mix of settings – Béni Mellal in the country’s interior, Rabat and finally Salé – binds the personal and the historical. ‘All the love that