His magisterial prose and poetry have won Abdellatif La bi successively France's Prix Goncourt and the Grand Prix de la Francophonie from the Acad mie Fran aise. Rue du Retour brings to the English reader the full drama and intensity of the poet's thought and words in this account of his return to life and hope after torture and then more than eight years in a Moroccan prison. He now lives in exile in Paris, but is honoured in his home country of Morocco, in
France and throughout the Maghreb as a towering literary figure --combining poetry, politics, translation, fostering creativity and younger talents male and female, in Arabic and in French.