04 Jan 2011 23:47:29
For 37-year-old Taia, who has lived in Paris for the last decade, being homosexual and Muslim are not mutually exclusive. He "feels Muslim" and is from a country where Islam is the state religion.
"I am the first Moroccan writer who has spoken openly about his homosexuality, to acknowledge it, but without turning my back on the country I'm from," he said.
"My homosexuality, I already felt it from the age of 13, at school.
"But despite this, I feel Muslim. There is no incompatibility between Islam and choices of sexual identity," he told AFP on a recent visit back to Morocco.
Taia, who writes in French and has been translated into Spanish and English, emerged from obscurity to make a splash on the French literary scene with novels such as the 2005 "Le Rouge du Tarbouche" (The Red of the Fez), an autobiographical account of his life in Paris, where he moved in 1999.
In November, he was awarded the prestigious 2010 Prix Flore for young authors.
A slim, softspoken man with a timid smile, the writer was born in a working-class neighbourhood in Sale, the Moroccan capital Rabat's twin city, into a childhood marked by deep poverty.
"My father was a chaouch (messenger) at the national library in Rabat. We were nine children who lived on top of each other in two rooms," he said.
"There was nothing to eat. You had to fight to eat. We spent our days on the streets. We were barefoot." His mother, a housewife, was illiterate.
After studying French literature at university in Morocco, Taia, then 26, moved to Paris, pursuing a doctorate at the Sorbonne and writing his first novels.
"I am the first Moroccan writer who has spoken openly about his homosexuality, to acknowledge it, but without turning my back on the country I'm from," he said.
"My homosexuality, I already felt it from the age of 13, at school.
"But despite this, I feel Muslim. There is no incompatibility between Islam and choices of sexual identity," he told AFP on a recent visit back to Morocco.
Taia, who writes in French and has been translated into Spanish and English, emerged from obscurity to make a splash on the French literary scene with novels such as the 2005 "Le Rouge du Tarbouche" (The Red of the Fez), an autobiographical account of his life in Paris, where he moved in 1999.
In November, he was awarded the prestigious 2010 Prix Flore for young authors.
A slim, softspoken man with a timid smile, the writer was born in a working-class neighbourhood in Sale, the Moroccan capital Rabat's twin city, into a childhood marked by deep poverty.
"My father was a chaouch (messenger) at the national library in Rabat. We were nine children who lived on top of each other in two rooms," he said.
"There was nothing to eat. You had to fight to eat. We spent our days on the streets. We were barefoot." His mother, a housewife, was illiterate.
After studying French literature at university in Morocco, Taia, then 26, moved to Paris, pursuing a doctorate at the Sorbonne and writing his first novels.
