Driss Bouissef Rekab

Driss Bouissef-Rekab was born in Tetouan in 1947. Son of a Spanish woman and Moroccan man, he pursued his primary and secondary education in Tetouan and Casablanca, and his higher education in Toulouse.

He joined Ilal Amam, in 1971. When he returned back home, he held a position as a lecturer in Spanish language and literature at the faculty of letter and human sciences in Rabat.

In 1976, he was arrested and condemned to 20 years, during the Casablanca trial of 1977. When he got released from jail, academic authorities prohibited regaining his position at the faculty. Then, he started his work as a journalist for the socialist weekly newspaper “Libération”.

In 1991, he needed to leave Morocco and landed in Spain, because he was threatened by the police. He was reappointed to the Faculty of letters in 2000 and retired in 2007.

He published two books on prison and two novels:
À l’ombre de Lalla Chafia edited by L’Harmattan, Paris in 1989, and
La tyrannie ordinaire. Lettres de prison edited by Tarik Éditions, Casablanca in 2005.

À l’ombre de Lalla Chafia was translated to Arabic by Abdelkader Chaoui, and published in 2002, by Tarik Éditions in Casablanca. Tarik edition also edited the French version of the book, in Morocco in 2007; which got also translated into Spanish and published in 2004 by Ediciones del oriente y del mediterráneo.

Divorced, as he came out of jail, Driss Bouissef-Rekab remarried and has a daughter.