Tohar Ben Jellous was born in Fez, Morocco to a shopkeeper in December of 1944. He is one of North Africa’s most successful post-colonial writers. He has won France’s Prix Goncourt. At the age of eighteen he moved from Fez to Tangier where he attended a French high school until enrolling at the University Mohammed V in Rabat in 1963. It was at the university where Ben Jelloun’s writing career began. After completing his Philosophy studies in Rabat, in 1971, Ben Jelloun immigrated to France. In France, he attended the Universite de Paris, receiving his Ph.D in psychiatric social work in 1975. The Sand Child and The Sacred Night are some of his most well known work. He now lives in Paris with his wife, Aicha, and his daughter, Merieme.