SOURCE: Ben Jelloun, Tahar, and Shusha Guppy. “Tahar Ben Jelloun: The Art of Fiction CLIX.” Paris Review 41, no. 152 (fall 1999): 40-62.

In the following interview, Ben Jelloun discusses how writing in French has affected his work, how his career began and progressed, and the role of Morocco in his prose.

Tahar Ben Jelloun is one of France's most celebrated writers: his most recent book, Racism Explained to My Daughter (Le Racisme expliqué à ma fille) was a best-seller; and in 1987 he was awarded the Prix Goncourt for his novel The Sacred Night (La Nuit sacrée), which was the first book by an Arab writer to be so honored. For the past two years he has been shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Ben Jelloun was born in Fez, Morocco. The family—there were four children, three boys and a girl—lived in a small apartment in the medina...