On Exile, Migration, and Hybrid Identity: An Interview with Abdelhamid El Beyuki

This interview offers an in-depth reflection on the intersections of exile, identity, and literary resistance in the work and life of Moroccan novelist Abdelhamid El Beyuki. Through an exploration of his creative vision, El Beyuki examines exile not only as a geographical displacement but as an enduring psychological and ontological condition. Writing becomes a site of resistance, remembrance, and reconstruction, where fragmented autobiographical experience is reassembled through fiction. He discusses how language and narrative serve as tools to preserve marginalized memory, challenge hegemonic discourses, and resist both political erasure and cultural essentialism. Migration, in his view, emerges simultaneously as a symptom of despair and a mode of defiant re-rooting. The conversation also engages with the role of love, ethics, and plurality in reshaping identity, highlighting literature’s capacity to offer more humane representations of migration, belonging, and hybridity. Ultimately, El Beyuki presents writing as a space for ethical imagination and cultural continuity that transcends borders.