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Moroccan-Dutch writer Abdelkader Benali has been chosen to receive the Golden goose quill, a Dutch cultural award initiated in 1955 and granted to a person or organization of great significance to the written and printed word.
The Beni Chikar-native was awarded as an ambassador of the Dutch language because «he knows how to reach young people» and builds «bridges» between the Dutch and Moroccan cultures, wrote Dutch newspaper AD.
The 44-year-old writer and novelist will receive the award on April 2 in Amsterdam, the same source added.
For the record, Benali was only a four-year-old child when he arrived in the Netherlands. He left Morocco alongside his mother to join his father who immigrated to Europe by the end of the 1960s.
His family settled down in Rotterdam, a city where he learned the local language, made friends and discovered his love for books and reading.
Benali started writing when he was in his twenties, becoming a writer and a columnist. Abdelkader Benali toured the Netherlands, in 2019, with his own entirely produced project : a play that he wrote and a monologue that he performs in. «It is about my grandmother, my Scheherazade», he told Yabiladi.
In his monologue, the actor/writer tells the stories of Scheherazade, stories that he lived and experienced in real life, to honor his grandmother’s storytelling talents that had such a huge impact on his life.
