Nini, Rachid – Diario de un ilegal (2002)

Novel

Publisher: Ediciones del Oriente y del Mediterráneo
Publication: 2002
Genre: Novel
Paperback: 207 pages
ISBN: 97-88-487198-81-6

Synopsis

“Diario de un illegal”, which was initially published as a weekly chronicle in the daily “Al Alam”, is the first testimony written in Arabic on the experience of Moroccan immigrants in Spain. Nini jokes with the existing stereotypes about the other on both sides of the Strait: on the one hand, that mythical El Dorado that vanishes once reached, and on the other, that mixture of paradisiacal vision ("bajarse al moro") and racist prejudices. The book, a first-hand testimony about the life of illegal immigrants, is also about the loneliness of the exiled, about the experience of so many human beings who are forced to leave their homeland, in search of another land where they can reinvent themselves and find themselves again. Testimony that is enriched with frequent interspersed episodes of the protagonist's life in Morocco, the homeland to which, finally, he returns, in a circular itinerary that begins and ends in the Strait of Gibraltar after touring the orange groves of the Spanish Levant, the pizzerias of the coastal cities and the modest dwellings of the immigrants in the big cities.

(SOURCE: La Central)

Article: Mora, Miguel. “Un repaso a la España clandestina”. "El País" 13/06/2022.

Article: Shepherd, N. Michelle. “Migration and mobility in Rachid Nini’s Diario de un ilegal”. "Vanderbilt e-Journal of Luso-Hispanic Studies".