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Mohammed Berrada is one of Morocco’s most influential literary figures—a master of narrative experimentation, a chronicler of personal and cultural memory, and a pioneer in reshaping the modern Arabic novel. Born in Rabat in 1938 and deeply connected to the historical cities of Fez and Rabat, Berrada’s works are infused with the rhythms, contradictions, and memories of a Morocco in transition. As both essayist and novelist, he uses literature not only as a means of storytelling but also as a tool for exploring identity, history, and the unstable nature of memory.
Through a distinctive blend of critical thought and creative fiction, Berrada breaks away from linear narrative forms and embraces the complexity of fragmented storytelling. His works transcend simple autobiography to become philosophical meditations on the personal and political landscapes of the Arab world.
A Literary Debut Rooted in Experimentation: Flaying the Skin and Early Essays
Mohammed Berrada's literary journey began with Salkh al-jild: wa-qisas ukhra (Flaying the Skin and Other Stories) in 1979. This collection signaled Berrada’s entry into the literary scene as a bold voice ready to disrupt conventions. In this early work, he experimented with the short story form to reflect on social realities, psychological introspection, and the shifting boundaries between the individual and collective experience.
Around the same time, Berrada also produced two major essays in literary criticism, establishing himself not just as a creative writer but also as a thinker deeply engaged with the evolution of Arabic literature. His academic and critical approach infused his fiction with a layered sensibility, drawing on philosophy, history, and literary theory.
Narrative Innovation: Fragmentation and the Arabic Novel
Berrada's contribution to Arabic literature lies in his innovative narrative techniques. Rather than telling stories through a single voice or linear structure, he crafts fragmented, multi-voiced texts that mirror the disjointedness of memory and the complexity of modern identity.
In his novel Fugitive Light (Al-Daw’ al-hārib; Lumière fuyante) published in 1998, Berrada takes the reader through a world illuminated not by clarity but by fleeting glimmers of insight. The light, as the title suggests, is unstable and elusive—a metaphor for the fragmented self and the difficulty of capturing the full truth of any experience. The novel plays with time, memory, and voice, rejecting simple realism in favor of psychological and narrative depth.
This method reaches another level in Mithla sayf lan yatakarrar (As If Summer Will Not Return, 1999), a novel that ventures beyond Morocco into ancient Egypt. Here, Berrada connects past and present, constructing a narrative that merges cultural history with existential questioning. His aim is not to tell a historical tale but to use the past as a prism through which to explore identity, exile, and impermanence.
A Landmark of Autofiction: The Game of Forgetting
Among Berrada’s diverse body of work, The Game of Forgetting (Lʿabat al-nisyān, 1987) stands out as his most accessible and arguably his most important contribution to Arabic literature. Neither pure memoir nor traditional novel, this work falls within the genre of autofiction—a self-aware, genre-defying form in which the narrator explores his own memories with both intimacy and critical distance.
Set primarily in the cities of Fez and Rabat, The Game of Forgetting presents a narrator who is often in tension with the author himself. The text refuses to give readers a single, authoritative perspective. Instead, it moves between different time periods and voices, interweaving childhood memories with adult reflections. Through this kaleidoscopic structure, Berrada portrays Moroccan cultural and family life from the 1940s onward, capturing both the personal details of upbringing and the broader historical and political shifts affecting his generation.
This constant interplay between remembering and forgetting forms the book’s central metaphor. Berrada treats memory not as a fixed archive but as a dynamic, ever-changing game—a terrain marked by distortion, omission, and reinterpretation. In doing so, he calls into question the very nature of truth in autobiographical writing.
Fez and Rabat: Cities of the Mind and Memory
Although Berrada has spent much of his life moving between Fez and Rabat, these cities are more than mere settings—they are active participants in his literary universe. Fez, with its ancient alleys, mosques, and scholarly heritage, serves as a symbol of traditional Morocco. Rabat, the capital city, represents modernity, political power, and social transformation.
Through his fiction, Berrada explores how these urban spaces shape identity and memory. His characters are often caught between two worlds: the heritage of Fez with its philosophical weight, and the evolving present of Rabat with its global connections and contemporary struggles. The tension between these cities mirrors the tension in Moroccan society as a whole, caught between past and future, tradition and change.
Literature as a Tool for Cultural Dialogue
Berrada’s novels and essays are not insular; they engage in deep conversations with the Arab literary tradition, French and Western modernism, and postcolonial theory. His writing reflects a cosmopolitan intellectual sensibility, and he is often in dialogue with other Moroccan and Arab writers who similarly wrestle with issues of cultural identity, memory, and modernity.
By introducing modernist techniques into Arabic prose—fragmentation, stream-of-consciousness, unreliable narrators—Berrada has helped shift the boundaries of what the Arabic novel can be. His influence is felt across a generation of North African writers who similarly view literature as both a mirror and a map: reflecting society, but also pointing toward new ways of being and knowing.
Conclusion: A Memory Weaver in the Moroccan Literary Tapestry
Mohammed Berrada’s contribution to Moroccan and Arab literature lies not just in his stylistic innovation but in his unwavering commitment to interrogating memory, identity, and the cultural fabric of his homeland. Whether through his essays, his experimental fiction, or his reflective autofiction, Berrada challenges readers to question the reliability of memory and the limits of narrative.
He is a writer of in-betweens: between fiction and truth, past and present, East and West, tradition and modernity. And in that liminal space, he has created a body of work that is at once deeply personal and universally resonant.
With every story he tells, Berrada invites us into the intricate “game of forgetting”—a game where memory becomes art, and where literature becomes a sanctuary for what might otherwise be lost.
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