Naima El Bezaz

Naima El Bezaz (born 1974 in Meknes, Morocco) is a Moroccan-Dutch writer, who also gives lectures and writes stories, essays and columns.

Naima El Bezaz

El Bezaz immigrated to The Netherlands with her family when she was four years old. After finishing high school she went to college, but quit to start a career in writing. At a lecture, she met author Yvonne Kroonenberg, who got her into contact with the publisher "Contact", resulting in her first book, "The Way North". This title was published in 1996 and she received the "Jenny Smelik-IBBY-prijs", an award for authors of children's or youth literature focusing on minority children in the Netherlands. The novel became very popular among Dutch youth. In 2002 her second novel The Devil's Lover appeared, and the story bundle became an instant bestseller. In Jack Spijkerman's Kopspijkers',' she read an explicit passage of her book, angering Muslims and Christians. In September 2006, her third and most controversial book appeared. The Expelled One is full of explicit content and criticism of religious dogmatism. Uitgeverij Contact calls it "The Moroccan-Dutch Turks Fruit", referring to the famous taboo-breaking Jan Wolkers novel.[1][2]