A celebrated writer of Morocco. Choukri's impulse to write came from his deep love for Tangiers and a craving to put those feelings on paper. His style was marked by hardness and urgency, which speaks of his many lost years. He was Morocco's most famous author. Choukri's book, For Bread Alone, which deals with the everyday experiences of a people living in a country with appalling levels of unemployment and illiteracy was first published in Paris in 1981. The book became an international bestseller and was translated into some forty languages. Muhammad Choukri was born in a dirt-poor mountain village in the Moroccan Rif and did not know to read and write until the age of 21. His family, when he was 7, fled the hunger of the Rif and arrived in Tangiers. Choukri made his life as an urchin in the narrow lanes of the souk. Morocco's King Muhammad paid for Choukri's treatments and convalescence in a military hospital in Rabat - he died of cancer.