Youssef Fadel's Trilogy: Testifying Violence to Negotiate Peace in Moroccan Literature

This chapter examines Youssef Fadel's trilogy on the recent history of Morocco to understand how the fictional representation of the pairing of violence/peace intertwines with the ongoing reconciliation process in the country. This process aims at coming to terms with the brutal experience of the Years of Lead (sanawāt al-raṣāṣ), a period of political crackdown under the rule of King Hassan II. Fadel’s novels Qiṭṭ abyaḍ ǧamīl yasīru maʿī (2011), Ṭāʾir azraq nādir yuḥalliqu maʿī (2013), and Faraḥ (2016) shed light on contested memories, such as political imprisonment, the Western Sahara conflict, and the construction of King Hassan II Mosque. These novels contribute to the collective memorialisation of this historical period by re-elaborating testimonial literature, developing the collective dimension through multiple narrators and fragmented time, and depicting the private resistance of female characters. In doing so, they expose several forms of violence across society and conceive of peace as something that must never be taken for granted but rather as something to be achieved through negotiation.