National Library in Rabat to host Ahmed Bouzfour

Morocco World News

Fez, January 29, 2012

The National Library of the kingdom of Morocco in Rabat will organize, in its monthly ‘book of the month’, a meeting with the Moroccan novelist and writer Ahmed Bouzfour on February 3rd at the library’s Seminars Hall. The event is scheduled to start at 5:30 p.m. The meeting will involve reading selections of Bouzfour’s writings as well as hold an open debate with the audience, moderated by the young Moroccan journalist Ayoub El Mouzaine.

Ahmed Bouzfour, who worked as a professor of pre-Islamic poetry and then as a professor of Arabic literature at both the University of Rabat and Casablanca, is considered one of the most important figures of Moroccan modern literature. He excelled in writing short stories; the first which he published in 1971 entitled ‘yasalounak a’n alkatel’ – ‘They ask you about murder’. In 2002, Bouzfour refused the Morocco Book Award, which is worth seven million centime, granted by the Ministry of Culture. Bouzfour’s refusal of the award came as a protest to what he called ‘the deterioration of the political, economic, and cultural conditions in Morocco’ and so he has chosen not to be in the spotlight in order to devote all his time to research and to his literary work.

The event comes to shed light on the work of one of the greatest Moroccan authors who has chosen to remain in the margins of a society that he sees full of shortcomings and paradoxes. The meeting, therefore, is an attempt to share and put Bouzfour’s texts in the forefront to be enjoyed and exposed to debate.