For 36-year-old writer AbdelKader Benali, success came unexpectedly early, with an acclaimed debut novel published right after his teenage years.

Wedding By The Sea, a story about a boy who returns to his home country in search of his sister’s runaway bridegroom, won the Best Literary Debut Prize of 1996 in Holland.

What many would have thought his moment of glory turned into something else.

“Success is like sickness,” he says. “It takes time to recover from it.”

The fame and fortune that came with the numerous translations of his novel did not insulate him from feeling “a desert of loneliness.” He was engaged in a struggle to find out who he was.

Benali was just four when his family migrated to the Netherlands from Morocco. He had come to know the smell of dirty diapers as he did that of good food and so small Hollander families were a complete contrast from his 10-member nuclear family. Though he made the transition into another culture, he did not much care for it.

Benali, who was in nairobi for the Storymoja Hay Festival, traces his desire to write from his younger days when he would listen to the tales told by his uncles.

“My uncles were butchers, just like my dad, and while they were super poor, they were smart because migration had become their university. As they discussed the world, I became curious; I wanted to be part of that story.”

Steadfast
Though he had become part of a different culture, he held on to his roots.

“There is a reason why Africans go there and keep something of themselves — whether it is their food or dressing — because otherwise they would go crazy.”

Perhaps that is why this student of history makes an effort to leave traces of his North-African culture in all his novels.

Benali, a poet, playwright and journalist, pauses, sipping his tea before referring to his style as “something between sceptical and curious.” He always wants to meet the person with the story and to tell the experience without reproducing it.

To get to the heights he has been to in his 13-year career of writing great tales, Benali has had to suffer.

“Out of the despair, stories come. That’s when you create something so precious, it feels like you’re giving birth and your stories become so close to you.”

His 2002 novel, The Long Awaited, was awarded the Libris Literature Prize and subsequent publications continue to find readers around the world but he feels he is getting better and better.

The difference between his first novel and his most recent works, he says, is that he is more open to the world as a result of the travels and the experiences he has picked up along the way. The constant, on the other hand, is that there has always been a support system around him that believes in his talent and always encouraged him to find his mojo.