This series offers a profound and personal look into an individual's life, exploring the pivotal moments and formative experiences that shaped their identity. Each installment reveals further layers of human complexity, often touching on themes of growth, loss, and self-discovery. Readers are immersed in an authentic narrative that resonates with universal human experiences. It's an intimate journey inviting reflection on one's own life path.
At the age of twenty Mohamed Choukri decides to learn to read and write, and joins a children's class at the local state school in Tangier. When not at school he hangs out in cafes, drinking and smoking kif. Choukri's determination to educate himself, and his compassion for those with whom he shares his life on the streets is inspirational.
Driven by famine from their home in the Rif, Mohamed's family walks to Tangiers in search of a better life. But his father is unable to find work and grows violent, beating Mohamed's mother and killing his sick younger brother in a moment of mad rage.On moving to another province Mohamed learns how to charm and steal, and discovers the joys of drugs, sex and alcohol. Proud, insolent and afraid of no-one, Mohamed returns to Tangiers, where he is caught up in the violence of the 1952 independence riots. During a short spell in a filthy Moroccan jail, a fellow inmate kindles Mohamed's life-altering love of poetry.The book itself was banned in Arab countries for its sexual explicitness. Dar al-Saqi was the first publishing house to publish it in Arabic in 1982, thirty years after it was written, though many translations came out before the Arabic version.Translated by Paul Bowles.Mohamed Choukri is one of North Africa's most controversial and widely read authors. At the age of twenty he decided to learn to read and write classical Arabic. He went on to become a teacher and writer, finally being awarded the chair of Arabic Literature at Ibn Batuta College in Tangier.Paul Bowles, perhaps best known for his novel The Sheltering Sky, collaborated closely with Choukri on the translation of For Bread Alone.The story of Choukri's life is continued in Streetwise.