Vu, Lu, Entendu

"I thank life." These are the words with which Vu, lu, entendé (Seen, Read, Heard) begins. Driss Chraïbi, the father of French-language Maghreb literature, does not put himself forward, but chooses to occupy the wings to give voice to an entire people, to resurrect an era (1926-1947), experienced on the other side of the Mediterranean through the eyes of a teenager open to the world. Recounting what he saw, read, and heard, with a humor that is uniquely his, Driss Chraïbi evokes, with emotion and a gigantic love for his native country, various characters: the heraldic figure of his father, his French friends from his youth, and above all the great personalities of Morocco, such as Allal el-Fassi and Ahmed Balafrej. "I thank life. It has fulfilled me. Compared to it, everything else is literature."