Abdelkebir Khatibi


Abdelkebir Khatibi was a prolific Moroccan literary critic, novelist, philosopher, playwright, poet, and sociologist. Affected in his late twenties by the rebellious spirit of 1960s counterculture, he challenged in his writings the social and political norms upon which the countries of the Maghreb region were constructed.

Career

Khatibi was born on February 11, 1938, in the Atlantic port city of El Jadida. By the age of 12, he began to write poems, in Arabic and French, which he sent to the radio and newspapers. He studied sociology at the Sorbonne, receiving a doctorate in 1965. His dissertation, Le Roman maghrébin , which examines the question of how a novelist could avoid propagandizing in the context of a postrevolutionary society, and its follow-up, Bilan de la sociologie au Maroc were both published shortly after the Paris Spring unrest of May 1968. He worked as a director of the Institut de sociologie in Rabat from 1966 until the institute's closure in 1970.

Final years

In his later years, Abdelkebir Khatibi had been suffering from a chronic cardiac condition which led to his death in the Moroccan capital, Rabat, five weeks after his 71st birthday. During the final stages of his illness, a measure of the high regard in which he was held was seen in the personal concern of King Mohammed VI who directed his transfer to Morocco's premier medical facility, Sheikh Zayed Hospital.
Khatibi is survived by his widow and their two children.

Awards and honours

Letter collections

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