Mohamed Choukri (Arabic: محمد شكري, Amazigh: ⵎⵓⵃⴰⵎⵎⴻⴷ ⵛⵓⴽⵔⵉ) (15 July 1935 – 15 November 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".
He ran away from his tyrannical father and became a homeless child living in the poor neighbourhoods of Tangier, surrounded by misery, prostitution, violence and drug abuse.
Choukri's first writing was published in Al Adab (monthly review of Beirut) in 1966,[1] a story entitled "Al-Unf ala al-shati" ("Violence on the Beach").
His main works are his autobiographical 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 was buried on 17 November at the Marshan cemetery in Tangier, with the audience of the minister of culture, numerous government officials, personalities and the spokesman of the king of Morocco.
The situation at home didn't improve however, his father was a cruel despot, and Choukri accused him of murdering his wife and his younger brother Kader.
After a family dispute, he left them at 11 years old, living on the streets of Tangier, pilfering to survive, and occasionally resorting to smuggling and prostitution.
Returning to Tangier in the 1960s, he continued to frequent bars and brothels, and began to write his story in Arabic, forthrightly and showing no reserve when detailing sexual experiences, which was utterly at odds with the mores of Morocco and the Arab world at the time, being met with harsh censure from religious and conservative forces in Morocco and elsewhere.
In 1999, For Bread Alone was removed from the syllabus of a modern Arabic literature course at the American University in Cairo taught by Dr. Samia Mehrez due to some sexually explicit passages, prompting some observers to criticize the "ban" and blame government censorship.
Dr. Mehrez was threatened with sexual harassment proceedings and expulsion, the book For Bread Alone was examined by parliament, and the academic and literary community largely supported her use of the novel through a letter-writing campaign.
His last will and testament, in which he left his entire estate to a foundation that was to be run jointly by five presidents: "After Choukri's death, this document disappeared without a trace," says Roberto de Hollanda, who was the author's literary agent for many years.
For one thing, he was afraid that the government might stop funding his expensive cancer treatment if he gave away the rights to his work to a foreign entity.
The European ones preferably, because they were richer.I cannot write about the milk of birds, the gentle stranglehold of the angelic beauty, grasps of dew, the cascade of lions, the heavy breast of females.