He was born into a scholarly maraboutic Chaoui Berber family from the modern Sedrata, in wilaya of Souk Ahras (in the Aurès region).

During this period in Paris he worked with Malek Haddad, developed a relationship with M'hamed Issiakhem, and in 1954, spoke extensively with Bertold Brecht.

During the Algerian War of Independence, Yacine was forced to travel abroad for a long time due to the harassment he faced from the DST.

He lived in numerous places, subsisting as a guest writer or working various odd jobs in France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Yugoslavia and the USSR.

He left for Vietnam in 1967, completely abandoning the novel and wrote 'L'Homme aux sandales de caoutchouc', a play celebrating Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnamese struggle against imperialism, that was published, performed and translated into Arabic in 1970.

During this period he had a significant change in philosophy: he refused to continue writing in French, and instead began working on popular theatre, epics and satires, performed in dialectal Arabic.

Beginning this work with the theatre company 'Théatre de la Mer' from Bab El Oued in 1971, sponsored by the Ministère du Travail et des Affaires Sociales, Kateb traveled all over Algeria for five years, putting on plays for an audience of workers, farmers and students.

Between 1972 and 1975 Kateb went with on tour performing the plays 'Mohamed prends ta valise' and 'La Guerre de deux mille ans' to France and to the German Democratic Republic.

In 1986 Kateb Yacine circulated an excerpt of a play about Nelson Mandela, and in 1987 he received the Grand prix national des Lettres in France.

In 1988 the Avignon Festival staged 'Le Bourgeois sans culotte ou le spectre du parc Monceau', a play about Robespierre that Yacine wrote at the request of the Arras Cultural Center for the bicentennial commemoration of the French Revolution.