On Saturday, the Grand Palais in Paris hosted a poignant and exceptional gathering celebrating the memory of the late writer and prominent thinker Edmond Amran El Maleh, an icon of Moroccan literature. This event was part of the “Messages from Morocco” program, concluding three days of activities in the Moroccan pavilion, which was the guest of honor at the Paris Book Festival.
The meeting, moderated by Idriss Khrouz, president of the Edmond Amran El Maleh Foundation, gathered several friends of the deceased and those interested in his prolific creativity, including the King’s advisor and founding president of the Essaouira-Mogador Association, André Azoulay, academic Mohamed Tzougar, and documentary filmmaker and writer Simone Bitton.
In a hall filled with attendees, speakers shared their perspectives on the remarkable legacy of the Moroccan “committed” writer and intellectual, whose path and writings continue to astonish through his inexhaustible imagination.
On this occasion, Azoulay stated that the late Edmond Amran El Maleh was “a fellow traveler of Galia, a man of high standards, an enlightened mentor, and a pioneer.” He considered that “Haj Edmond would have been the happiest Moroccan today, April 12, 2025, among the thousands of visitors who came to celebrate books and discuss them,” recalling that “he shared with Edmond Amran El Maleh a love for Essaouira and a passion for it.”
Azoulay expressed his “endless gratitude” to the late writer “for the beautiful pages he wrote about this Essaouira epic, and for his enlightened Judaism which taught us—and many others—that preserving the dignity and freedom of others, even those who were not Jewish, was what formed and nourished the continuity of Moroccan Judaism, its moral character, and its philosophical and social modernity.”
He highlighted the “uniqueness and essence of this exceptional thinker, who masterfully blended his political and national commitment with his unquenchable thirst for storytelling and sharing his Moroccan passion, leaving a special imprint that makes him ever-present in the stories he tells us.”
Azoulay explained why Edmond Amran El Maleh remained “steadfast in his convictions, his anger, and his radicalism until his death,” whenever he felt that his Morocco was misunderstood, bluntly stating: it was let down by those who, in his view, failed to appreciate the true value of the depth and richness of Morocco’s cultural, heritage, and social legacy in their writings or interventions.”
The King’s advisor dedicated a significant part of his remarks to the crucial role El Maleh played “in understanding, supporting, and promoting contemporary Moroccan arts,” noting that El Maleh was an activist, educator, poet, art critic, and philosopher with refined taste. He embodied an entire generation and a living blend of a school that made Morocco the foundational place for his achievements.
André Azoulay, recalling El Maleh’s writings that criticized the duality of art and craft, a notion many fell victim to, emphasized that El Maleh insisted that “our ancient traditions carry with them an aesthetic richness that reflects the depth of the social and cultural reality of Moroccan society.” He evoked Eugène Delacroix, who regarded Moroccan carpets as magnificent artistic pieces, similar to Henri Matisse and other great artists who have long viewed Morocco as a primary source of inspiration in their artistic and aesthetic choices.
The King’s advisor concluded that through El Maleh’s diligent and meticulous support of the emergence and development of the Moroccan visual arts school since 1976, he chose to stand alongside Ahmed Cherkaoui to support him, as Cherkaoui’s works opened wide the doors for Moroccan painting to find its place on the walls of the greatest exhibitions, urging the audience to read or reread El Maleh’s writings, who was often described as “the painter of words,” encouraging us to recognize and appreciate the centrality of visual arts as a symbolic expression of contemporary expression in our cultural landscape.
During this gathering, much attention was devoted to the passion of artist Edmond Amran El Maleh for painting and visual arts, with speakers discussing his works that bear multiple influences.
In his assessment of the writings of this great thinker, Tzougar noted that they represent “a late literature,” as El Maleh was fundamentally “a political actor,” suggesting that his turn towards literary writing was “the result of a fragmented and intermittent writing process.”
The researcher explained that this transformation fits into a narrative reconstruction process that has been enshrined in Morocco since the 2011 Constitution, whose preamble refers to “this multiple identity” that characterizes it.
For her part, filmmaker Simone Bitton, who dedicated her latest film to Edmond Amran El Maleh titled “A Thousand and One Days in the Life of Haj Edmond” (2024), mentioned that it took him 60 years to abandon the “wooden language” and “dare to embark on literary writing,” a style he ultimately adopted for nearly thirty years.
She added that “he wrote every day about everything: publications, novels, art criticism, recipes, and more,” admitting that she learned a great deal about this figure from Morocco’s intellectual and cultural landscape, including in the visual arts.
The gathering also addressed the Sufi dimension in the late El Maleh’s works, followed by a discussion with the audience, which particularly praised the Edmond Amran El Maleh Foundation’s initiative to republish all of the late writer’s works.
This year, Morocco participated in the Paris Book Festival, held at the Grand Palais, as the guest of honor with a pavilion covering an area of 330 square meters, offering a rich and diverse program that included 28 meetings in the conference space, 16 discussion sessions on literary and social topics, 10 book presentations, and two artistic performances (including music and theater), along with an international roundtable on “The Atlantic Fate between France and Morocco,” in line with this year’s theme: “The Sea.”
