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Tennessee Williams in Tangier
Paperback in very good condition. Presented in original unprinted acetate dustwrapper - light edgewear to this. Lower edges of main jacket cover also lightly edgeworn. Page block lightly foxed. Contents are clean, spine is tight. AD
85 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1979
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About the author
Mohamed Choukri
37 books511 followersمحمد شكري
Mohamed Choukri (Arabic: محمد شكري), born on July 15, 1935 and died on November 15, 2003, was a Moroccan author and novelist who is best known for his internationally acclaimed autobiography For Bread Alone (al-Khubz al-Hafi), which was described by the American playwright Tennessee Williams as 'A true document of human desperation, shattering in its impact'.
Choukri was born in 1935, in Ayt Chiker (Ayt Ciker, hence his adopted family name: Choukri / Cikri), a small village in the Rif mountains, in the Nador province. He was raised in a very poor family. He ran away from his tyrannical father and became a homeless child living in the poor neighborhoods of Tangier, surrounded by misery, prostitution, violence and drug abuse. At the age of 20, he decided to learn how to read and write and became later a schoolteacher. His family name "Choukri" is connected to the name Ayt Chiker which is the Berber tribe cluster he belonged to before fleeing hunger to Tangiers. It is most likely that he adopted this name later in Tangiers, because in the rural Rif family names were rarely registered.
In the 1960s, in the cosmopolitan Tangier, he met Paul Bowles, Jean Genet and Tennessee Williams. His first writing was published in 1966 (in Al-adab, monthly review of Beirut, a novel entitled Al-Unf ala al-shati (Violence on the Beach). International success came with the English translation of Al-khoubz Al-Hafi (For Bread Alone, Telegram Books) by Paul Bowles in 1973. The book was be translated to French by Tahar Ben Jelloun in 1980 (éditions Maspéro), published in Arabic in 1982 and censored in Morocco from 1983 to 2000. The book would later be translated into 30 other languages.
His main works are his autobiographic trilogy, beginning with For Bread Alone, followed by Zaman Al-Akhtaâ aw Al-Shouttar (Time of Mistakes or Streetwise, Telegram Books) and finally Faces. He also wrote collections of short stories in the 1960s/1970s (Majnoun Al-Ward, Madman of the roses, 1980; Al-Khaima, The Tent, 1985). Likewise, he is known for his accounts of his encounters with the writers Paul Bowles, Jean Genet and Tennessee Williams (Jean Genet and Tennessee Williams in Tangier, 1992, Jean Genet in Tangier, 1993, Jean Genet, suite and end, 1996, Paul Bowles: Le Reclus de Tanger, 1997). See also 'In Tangier', Telegram Books 2008 for all three in one volume.
Mohamed Choukri died on November 15, 2003 from cancer at the military hospital of Rabat and was buried at the Marshan cemetery in Tangier on November 17, with the audience of the Minister of Culture, numerous government officials, personalities and the spokesman of the King of Morocco. Before he died, Choukri created a foundation, Mohamed Choukri (president, Mohamed Achaâri), owning his copyrights, his manuscripts and personal writings.
Mohamed Choukri (Arabic: محمد شكري), born on July 15, 1935 and died on November 15, 2003, was a Moroccan author and novelist who is best known for his internationally acclaimed autobiography For Bread Alone (al-Khubz al-Hafi), which was described by the American playwright Tennessee Williams as 'A true document of human desperation, shattering in its impact'.
Choukri was born in 1935, in Ayt Chiker (Ayt Ciker, hence his adopted family name: Choukri / Cikri), a small village in the Rif mountains, in the Nador province. He was raised in a very poor family. He ran away from his tyrannical father and became a homeless child living in the poor neighborhoods of Tangier, surrounded by misery, prostitution, violence and drug abuse. At the age of 20, he decided to learn how to read and write and became later a schoolteacher. His family name "Choukri" is connected to the name Ayt Chiker which is the Berber tribe cluster he belonged to before fleeing hunger to Tangiers. It is most likely that he adopted this name later in Tangiers, because in the rural Rif family names were rarely registered.
In the 1960s, in the cosmopolitan Tangier, he met Paul Bowles, Jean Genet and Tennessee Williams. His first writing was published in 1966 (in Al-adab, monthly review of Beirut, a novel entitled Al-Unf ala al-shati (Violence on the Beach). International success came with the English translation of Al-khoubz Al-Hafi (For Bread Alone, Telegram Books) by Paul Bowles in 1973. The book was be translated to French by Tahar Ben Jelloun in 1980 (éditions Maspéro), published in Arabic in 1982 and censored in Morocco from 1983 to 2000. The book would later be translated into 30 other languages.
His main works are his autobiographic trilogy, beginning with For Bread Alone, followed by Zaman Al-Akhtaâ aw Al-Shouttar (Time of Mistakes or Streetwise, Telegram Books) and finally Faces. He also wrote collections of short stories in the 1960s/1970s (Majnoun Al-Ward, Madman of the roses, 1980; Al-Khaima, The Tent, 1985). Likewise, he is known for his accounts of his encounters with the writers Paul Bowles, Jean Genet and Tennessee Williams (Jean Genet and Tennessee Williams in Tangier, 1992, Jean Genet in Tangier, 1993, Jean Genet, suite and end, 1996, Paul Bowles: Le Reclus de Tanger, 1997). See also 'In Tangier', Telegram Books 2008 for all three in one volume.
Mohamed Choukri died on November 15, 2003 from cancer at the military hospital of Rabat and was buried at the Marshan cemetery in Tangier on November 17, with the audience of the Minister of Culture, numerous government officials, personalities and the spokesman of the King of Morocco. Before he died, Choukri created a foundation, Mohamed Choukri (president, Mohamed Achaâri), owning his copyrights, his manuscripts and personal writings.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 3, 2024
Innecesario. Bastante amable debió ser Williams con Chukri, que no dejó de hacerse el encontradizo, gorronearle consumiciones en el Café de París y acoplarse a cenas con Paul Bowles con tal de escribir un libro para decir que había conocido a Tennessee Williams. Como relato no tiene ningún valor literario y como catálogo de anécdotas, insuficiente.
June 7, 2007
I had not heard of the Moroccan writer Mohamed Choukri - this is a brief (80 page) book, more or less made up of diary entries describing his social encounters with Tennessee Williams while the latter was visiting Tangiers for a few weeks in 1973. Both Williams himself and the whole gay American/European writer in Morocco experience were a little past their respective heydays at that point, but it's a concise and interesting insight into an almost totally random slice of 20th century literary life and will eventually get me to pursue both Choukri and the writer Mohamed Hrabet, and also reminds to add Anthony Burgess's Earthly Powers (in which he presents a fictionalized version of the whole gay American/European writer in Morocco experience) to my all-time favorites shelf.
The physical book itself is also of interest - translated by Paul Bowles, it is hand-bound, from a numbered 1979 edition of 200, signed by Choukri and Bowles - that would make it worth about $75-100, had I not picked it out of the trash where it probably landed because it is water-damaged - part of me hopes that reduces its value enough that I won't feel obliged to sell it and can hold onto it as an artifact.
Also in that discard heap and largely unblemished - the Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, Shusaku Endo's Silence (from 1969), Martin Amis's Night Train, a 17th century Spanish writer called Francisco de Quevedo and Patti Smith's 1996 tribute to Robert Mapplethorp, The Coral Sea - you could say I am pleased!
The physical book itself is also of interest - translated by Paul Bowles, it is hand-bound, from a numbered 1979 edition of 200, signed by Choukri and Bowles - that would make it worth about $75-100, had I not picked it out of the trash where it probably landed because it is water-damaged - part of me hopes that reduces its value enough that I won't feel obliged to sell it and can hold onto it as an artifact.
Also in that discard heap and largely unblemished - the Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, Shusaku Endo's Silence (from 1969), Martin Amis's Night Train, a 17th century Spanish writer called Francisco de Quevedo and Patti Smith's 1996 tribute to Robert Mapplethorp, The Coral Sea - you could say I am pleased!
June 8, 2025
Un señor pijo en Marruecos.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews