Mohammed Berrada (Arabic: محمد برادة), also transliterated Muhammad Baradah, (born 1938 in Rabat) is a Moroccan novelist, literary critic and translator writing in Arabic. He is considered one of Morocco's most important modern authors.[1]
Early life
From 1976 to 1983, Berrada was the president of Morocco's writers union. He teaches Arab literature at the faculté des lettres of the Mohammed V University in Rabat. He is a member of the advisory board of the Moroccan literary magazine Prologue.
Career
Berrada belonged to a literary movement that wanted to experiment with new techniques of writing (what Moroccan critics call attajrib (experimentation). The text does not give much weight to the plot and is written in independent scenes, images, thoughts and portraits. In the field of language, dialects take on an important role, such as Fassi (the dialect of Fez) together with wordplay and allusions.
Since July 26th 1977, Berrada has been married to Leila Shahid, ambassador of the State of Palestine to the European Union.
References
- ^ Salim Jay, "Dictionnaire des écrivains marocains", Eddif, 2005, p. 91
Books
- Al-Daw al-harīb (fleeting light) (1993) : The relation between a painter and two women of different generations, the mother and the daughter. Translated into English as Fugitive Light (2002) by Issa J. Boullata.
- Dirāsāt fī al-qiṣṣah al-ʻArabiyah : Waqāʼiʻ nadwat Miknās (Bayrūt : Muʼassasat al-Abḥāth al-ʻArabiyah, 1986.)
- Le théâtre au Maroc : tradition, expérimentation et perspectives (Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 1998) .
- L'ubat al-Nisyan (the game of forgetting) (Rabat: Dar al-Aman, 1986.): the story of an intellectual about his life, from his childhood to adulthood in Morocco in the middle of the 20th century. Translated into English as The Game of Forgetting (1996) by Issa J. Boullata.
- Like a summer that will not come back (Sinbad, 2001) Memories of the summer of 1956 when the author studied in Cairo.
- Imraʼat al-nisyān : riwāyah (Casablanca: Nashr al-Fanak, 2001.)
- Faḍāʼāt riwāʼīyah (Rabat: Wizārat al-Thaqāfah, 2003.)
- Siyāqāt thaqāfīyah : mawāqif, mudākhalāt, marāfi (Rabat: Wizārat al-Thaqāfah, 2003.)
External links
- The voice of the author: the Mediterranean and the Moroccan vision, his thoughts on the idea of fiction and on being 'cosmopolitan'