Leïla Slimani

Biography

Leïla Slimani (born 3 October 1981) is a Franco-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.

Slimani's maternal grandmother Anne Dhobb (née Ruetsch, born 1921) 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. Her autobiographical novel was published in 2003; she became the first writer in t...