The prisoner

The Prisoner novel by Malika Oufkir was published with the translation of Mustafa Al-Waryaghli by the Cultural Arab Center as part of distinguished translated novels and autobiographies. The Prisoner is considered one of the most important works of prison literature and is an autobiographical novel about an experience of imprisonment and abuse experienced by the Oufkir family. About the book The Prisoner Malika Oufkir spent her entire life as a prisoner. Her eldest son, General Oufkir, was five years old when King Mohammed V adopted her, and she was raised inside his palace in Rabat, which she rarely graduated from. At the age of eighteen, thanks to her father's position, she became one of the most pampered and favored girls in the kingdom. However, the attempt to overthrow Hassan II on August 16, 1972, changed the course of events. General Oufkir "died by suicide," and imprisonment became the fate of his wife Fatima and their six children, the youngest of whom was less than three years old. From the walls of the desert to suffocating cells, Malika raised her brothers and sisters with limited means, refusing to succumb to despair. They spent twenty years in detention under terrible conditions. Malika, like a modern Scheherazade, never forgot anything: the anxiety of lonely nights, hunger and thirst, the disappointments of a woman deprived of love, and also the mockery of a family sentenced to the harshest punishment: oblivion. She recounts that astonishing escape, the secret wandering from Casablanca to Tangier, and from Tangier to Paris, and offers us a wonderful lesson in courage and resilience in facing the harshest forms of deprivation. A heartbreaking testimony, it was awarded the Dar Al-Sahafa Prize upon its publication in France in 1999. Quotes from The Prisoner I lived a topsy-turvy fairy tale, the princess I was turned gradually into Cinderella through violence. We still believe in the illusion of good in human nature. Damn hunger, and crush it! How much a person humiliates and degrades himself. It makes you forget your family, your loved ones, and your friends, and strips you of all your values and principles. It takes away your dignity and humanity, turning you into a human beast that obeys only its instincts.