Tahar Ben Jelloun

I am a guest of the French language. My poems in French are born of my interaction with the French language, which is not the same as that of a French poet.

I'd thought sexuality was instinctive or natural, but it's profoundly linked to inner security and cultural context.

People must insist on the right to say no, to be alone, to stand out from the herd. Creative artists can say all this in their own way and in their own field, by hard, rigorous work.

My kind publishers, Toby Mundy and Margaret Stead of Atlantic Books, have commissioned me to write the life of Queen Victoria.

Every five years, I like to do a big birthday party. I had my 45th birthday with 75 friends in Marrakesh, Morocco.

Is France a northern European export powerhouse, or a Mediterranean indebted and dependent economy? Yes to both.