To me if a writer writes to earn a living, he is bound to compromise –– to consider what sells and what doesn’t. That is not my preoccupation. I am glad to have found a readership, but one can’t write only what is likely to sell. A writer is not a shopkeeper. A writer creates an imaginary world that he transmits to others.
The Paris Review (Fall 1999)
Use the link below to read an excerpt from the 1999 interview with Moroccan novelist TAHAR BEN JELLOUN:
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/893/the-art-of-fiction-no-159-tahar-ben-jelloun
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