Moroccan Author’s Debut Novel Emerges After Overcoming Personal Struggles

One word can define him: perseverance. After a chaotic school career, Rayane Bensaghir drops out. "After failing several times, I left school at 17, without a CESS. At the time, I lived only for football," he tells La Libre. But he fails to make a career in football. Without a diploma, without a project, the future was darkening for him. He regains self-confidence and decides to get his diploma. "I started working in shisha bars or nightclubs to raise enough money to pass my CESS. Then, at 24, I enrolled in political science at the ULB."

His new life is promising. One day, while watching television, the idea of trying his hand at writing comes to his mind. "I was watching TV and I saw the writer Rachid Djaïdani on the set of Tout le monde en parle. He came from the neighborhoods, like me, and dressed like me. I told myself that, after all, I too could write novels." It will take him a year to write his very first novel. "I didn’t have much time to write, with my studies and my work, but I got to it as soon as I could."

In June, the project materializes. Rayane Bensaghir publishes "The Devil’s Ally Madman" (ed Millot, 2022). The novel tells the story of Gafora, a young Bruxellois who retraces the thread of his life from his prison cell. The second-year master’s student in international relations at the ULB addresses themes such as school dropout, precariousness and radicalism. "I saw people around me being seduced by Islamism. This proximity intrigued me. I wondered why them and not me. So I became interested in the factors conducive to radicalization. At one point, I was so lost in my life that it might have happened to me too. So I wanted to understand the reasons behind these behavioral changes. It’s not by treating them as madmen that we solve the problem."