Driss Bouissef Rekab was born in Tetuan in 1947 and studied Spanish Philology in France. A member of the clandestine communist organisation Ila al-Amam, he was detained in Rabat in January 1976 and condemned to twenty years in prison, of which he served more than thirteen. In prison and supervised by the University of Toulouse, he wrote a doctoral thesis on Spanish prisons during the Franco dictatorship as well as an autobiographical work titled A l’ombre de Lalla Chafia (In the Shadow of Lalla Shafia), which was published in Spain by Ediciones del Oriente y del Mediterráneo in 2004. This is one of the earliest first-hand written accounts of the Moroccan prison system during the so-called “years of lead”. He lived in Spain from 1991 to 1999, after which he returned to Rabat where he taught Spanish Language and Literature in the Arts Faculty of the Rabat University and continued writing his books. He is also author of La tyrannie ordinaire. Lettres de prison (Everyday Tyranny: Letters from Prison – Casablanca: Tarik, 2005) and Le fils du souk (Son of the Souk – Paris: Velours, 2007).
