Leïla Slimani

Leïla Slimani (born 3 October 1981) is a French-Moroccan writer and journalist. She is also a French diplomat in her capacity as the personal representative of the French president Emmanuel Macron to the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie. In 2016, she was awarded the Prix Goncourt for her novel Chanson douce.

Life

Slimani's maternal grandmother Anne Dhobb (née Ruetsch; 1921–2016) grew up in Alsace. In 1944, she met her future husband Lakhdar Dhobb, a Moroccan colonel in the French Colonial Army, during the liberation of France. After the war she followed him back to Morocco, where they lived in Meknes. Anne Dhobb's autobiographical novel was published in 2003; she became the first writer in the family. Her daughter (Slimani's mother) is Béatrice-Najat Dhobb-Slimani, an otolaryngologist, who married the French-educated Moroccan economist Othman Slimani. The couple had three daughters; Leïla Slimani is the middle one.

Leïla was born in Rabat on 3 October 1981; she grew up in a liberal, French-speaking household and attended French schools. An important rupture in Slimani's childhood occurred in 1993 when her father was falsely implicated in a finance scandal and fired from his position as president of the CIH Bank (he was later officially exonerated.).