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NEWS > Performances, talks, and recitals etc > A thought-provoking literary visit

A thought-provoking literary visit

Moroccan author Zineb Mekouar met with SIS students to discuss her recent novel and her career and inspiration as a writer.
Zineb Mekouar (left) with French teacher Maud Anzén
Zineb Mekouar (left) with French teacher Maud Anzén

SIS students were recently visited by Moroccan author Zineb Mekouar. Born in Casablanca, Morocco, in 1991 and has lived in Paris since 2009. She studied at two top French schools, Sciences-Po and HEC Paris, and later studied business and political science. She has always cared deeply about topics like immigration, gender equality, and how childhood shapes adulthood.

Zineb has loved writing since an early age and first got into literature through poetry. Her first novel, La Poule et son Cumin, came out in March 2022. It was a big success—it was shortlisted for the Goncourt Prize for First Novels and chosen as one of the Académie Goncourt’s summer favourites. The book explores women’s freedom in Morocco and the challenges immigrants face in France. Earlier this year she published Remember the Bees, which she discussed with the students. 

She was asked about the shift from her studies to being a writer. She explained the value – that knowing about geopolitics helped her to write to write about a country and its issues. Students wanted to know why she wrote about bees in her recent book She explained that bees were an image of our humanity, threatened by climate change and fragile. Environmental issues are important to her, she said. She told them about the place where the story takes place in Morocco. It’s an ancestral beekeeping area in the high Atlas mountains where relations with bees are kind of sacred.

Students also asked what inspired her to write her books. She then answered that her experiences and countries she lived in led her to focus her books on the life conditions of women in both France and Morocco and childhood. But she cautioned that it was not easy to be published and that patience and resilience were necessary – and also contacts. But for all the ‘no’s she reminded us you only need one ‘yes’.

Naturally, coming from students of French, she was asked about the difference between the French spoken in Morocco and that spoken in France. She said the one spoken in Morocco was a school French whereas the one spoken in France was more street French with slang and more variation. In Morocco they also mix Arabic with French she pointed out. She then added that French people have many biases about Moroccans and don’t know much about the country. The Arabic spoken in Morocco differs from the one spoken in Lebanon for instance. It is a theme in her coming book that will be about the transmission of language and culture through generations in Mediterranean countries.

She also spoke about social injustice and education in Morocco. She said that children from poor families were unlucky as their parents kept them at home to help them with farming or to help in the  home. Girls especially stopped school at 12 because of that.

Her visit was linguistically and socially thought-provoking for our students, and offered a window on a very particular author experience to serve as inspiration.

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