Opening the Circle: Storyteller and Audience in Moroccan Prison Literature1

Abstract

This article examines two literary responses to the prison experience in Morocco. These responses—Abdellatif Laâbi's Le chemin des ordalies (Path of Ordeals) and Khadija Marouazi's Sīrat al-ramād (Biography of Ashes)—seek to subvert the dominant discourse of the state through various narrative strategies including the use of storytelling techniques, shifting point of view, multiple narrators, and the inclusion of multiple languages and linguistic registers in the text. By way of literature, Laâbi and Marouazi expand the range of voices that are narrating the story of Morocco's ‘Lead Years’, and thus are contributing to a multi-voiced narrative of reconciliation with the past, and suggesting ways of moving forward.