“Mohamed Choukri (Arabic: محمد شكري, Amazigh: ⵎⵓⵃⴰⵎⵎⴻⴷ ⵛⵓⴽⵔⵉ) (15 July 1935 – 15 November 2003) was a Moroccan author and novelist who is best known for his internationally acclaimed autobiography For Bread Alone (al-Khubz al-Hafi), which was described by the American playwright Tennessee Williams as “”a true document of human desperation, shattering in its impact””.

Choukri was born in 1935 in Ayt Chiker (Ayt Chiker, hence his adopted family name: Choukri / Chikri), a small village in the Rif mountains in the Nador province, Morocco. He was raised in a very poor family. He ran away from his tyrannical father and became a homeless child living in the poor neighbourhoods of Tangier, surrounded by misery, prostitution, violence and drug abuse. At the age of 20, he decided to learn how to read and write and later became a schoolteacher. His family name Choukri is connected to the name Ayt Chiker which is the Amazigh tribe cluster he belonged to before fleeing hunger to Tangier. It is most likely that he adopted this name later in Tangier because in the rural Rif family names were rarely registered.
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