For Bread Alone by Mohamed Choukri

By Eelco van Riel

The short:

A classic. It is a tale of survival rendered into English by the renowned American writer Paul Bowles. For Bread Alone is an account of the author’s own rebellious youth on the backstreets and alleyways of Tangier, Morocco.

The long:

Violence. Deprivation. Starvation. Thieving. Whoring. Lust. Laughter. Desperation. It is all there. For Bread Alone (Al-Khubz al-Ḥāfi) is a depiction of the homeless, the destitute, and the oppressed. Choukri explores and critiques the divisions present in Moroccan society, notably between the coastal Arabs and rural Riffians. It portrays the scorn of the Arabs reserved for the Berbers of Morocco’s mountainous hinterland: a land, Choukri relates, “of hunger and murderers.”

To read or not to read:

Read. It is a short, quick-paced semi-autobiographical novel. It does a wonderful job at making palpable the hardship endured by the young Choukri. His experiences afford the reader a rare glimpse into the underbelly of Moroccan society in the 1950’s.