Algerian Author Yasmina Khadra Accuses Moroccan Writer of Sabotaging Career

"After twenty years of silence, seeing no one calm down and try to renounce villainy, I was forced to denounce the unqualifiable maneuvers of a writer whom I have always respected and who has proven to be unworthy of consideration. I named Tahar Ben Jelloun," said Yasmina Khadra (real name Mohamed Moulessehoul) in an interview with TV5 Monde.

"When you have a renowned writer, known throughout the world, a Goncourt Prize winner, an influential member of the Goncourt Academy, named Tahar Ben Jelloun, who has been telling everywhere for 20 years, from January 2001 until this morning, that I am an impostor, that it is not me who writes my books, that he knows my ghostwriter. Through this, find all kinds of defamation, fabrications, the most chimerical ravings, then I wrote this book (’The Kiss and the Bite’, editor’s note)," detailed the Algerian writer.

He notably reproaches the Moroccan writer for having blocked his way to success. "My people are asking a lot of questions. They are starting to doubt. A man excluded from all French literary institutions and juries (literary). My latest book, The Salt of All Forgetfulness, was blocked by all French television and radio stations," he said.