Tunisian Story-spinner Hassouna Mosbahi Dead at 75

JUNE 6, 2025 — Prolific and influential Tunisian novelist Hassouna Mosbahi died this past Wednesday at the age of 75.

Born in 1950, Mosbahi’s first stories were modeled after the oral folk tradition, a style that marked much of his work, particularly his 2007 novel A Tunisian Tale, which appeared in Max Weiss’s English translation in 2012.

In a conversation with the International Literature Festival in Berlin, Mosbahi was quoted as saying:

Two things have always fascinated me: the rhythm of the Quran, which I learned by heart without understanding the meaning of the verses, and the storyteller’s freedom. He was the only one who could talk about taboo subjects like women and love. The villagers hung on his every word when they gathered around the fireplace and the teapot.

He won the The Tunisian Ministry of Cultural Affairs Prize for Short Stories in 1968, at just 18. He began his career as a French teacher, but then was dismissed for political reasons in the mid-1970s. He spent time abroad — in Paris, Madrid, and London — before settling in Munich in 1985, where he lived and worked for nearly three decades.

In 2005, Mosbahi returned to Tunisia.

While in Germany, he worked as an editor for the magazine Fikr wa Fan and also wrote for a number of different German newspapers and magazines. He also wrote novels, receiving awards both in Tunisia and in abroad, including the National Novel Prize in Tunisia in 1986 and the Tukan Prize in Munich in 2000. He went on to win recognition around the world. In 2001, his short story entitled “The Tortoise,” in Peter Clark’s translation, was shortlisted for the prestigious Caine Prize for African Writing. In 2016, he was granted the Mohamed Zafzaf Prize for Fiction for his entire body of work.

A Tunisian Tale was Mosbahi’s first novel translated to English; William Hutchins translated two others: We Never Swim in the Same River Twice and Solitaire.

Six by Mosbahi:

Caine Prize-shortlisted “The Tortoise,“ translated by Peter Clark, which appears in Sardines and Oranges: Short Stories from North Africa

From A Tunisian Tale, translated by Max Weiss

“Delirium in the Desert,” translated by William Hutchins

“Truman Capote,” translated by William Hutchins

“Yunus on the Beach,” translated by William Hutchins

From Escape to Analusia, translated by William Hutchins