“ Abdellah Taïa writes with great tenderness and sympathy about the intricacies and complexities of his characters’ private lives… He is at his most brilliant in Living in Your Ligh t.” Colm Tóibín
Taïa’s wonderfully ferocious and contradictory heroine Malika is a powerful antidote to the sentimentality and exoticism that so often distorts depictions of Arab womanhood. Translated by Emma Ramadan and shortlisted for the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 2022, Abdellah Taïa’s novel gives us three moments in the life of Moroccan countrywoman, Malika, who recounts with rage her strategies to escape the injustices of history.
Abdellah Taïa was born in the public library of Rabat in Morocco, where his father was the janitor. Acclaimed as a novelist and filmmaker, his books include Le jour de roi , which was awarded the prestigious French Prix de Flore in 2010. An adaptation of his novel L’Armée du salut was his first feature film, hailed by the New York Times as giving, “the Arab world its first on-screen gay protagonist.” He made history in 2006 by coming out in his country, where homosexuality is illegal. His commitment to the defense of homosexuals in Muslim countries has made him one of the most prominent Arab writers of his generation.