La Prisonniere - Softcover

Malika Oufkir has been a prisoner for virtually her whole life. Born into a proud Berber family in 1953, the eldest daughter of the King of Morocco's closest aide, Malika was adopted by Mohammed V as a royal ward and brought to live in the palace at Rabat to be a companion to his favourite little daughter. There she grew up locked away among the royal wives and concubines of the King's harem. After the old king died his successor Hassan II took over the role of her affectionate adoptive father. By the time she was allowed to leave the palace at the age of sixteen, she was one of the most eligible heiresses in the kingdom, and tasted a couple of years of heady freedom amongst the international jetset.

But in 1972, when Malika was eighteen, her father, General Oufkir, was arrested after an attempt to assassinate the king, and summarily executed. Malika, her beautiful mother and her five brothers and sisters - the youngest of whom was barely three years old - were thrown into a remote desert jail by the man Malika had only known as a loving surrogate father. The family was kept locked away without any communication with the outside world in increasingly barbaric and inhumane conditions, fighting a daily battle against malnutrition, disease, loneliness and despair. Then, after fifteen years of imprisonment, the last ten years of which they were locked up in solitary cells, the Oufkir children managed an audacious escape. Recaptured after five days, the public hue and cry created by their escape ensured that they were then submitted to house arrest rather than prison - but it was only in 1996, after her younger sister managed to flee the country, that Malika, robbed of the best years of her life, was allowed to leave Morocco and start a new life in France.

r was born into a proud Berber family in 1953, the eldest daughter of the King of Morocco's closest aide. She was adopted by the king to be a companion to his little daughter, and at the royal court of Rabat, Malika grew up locked away in a golden cage, among the royal wives and concubines.
But when Malika was eighteen, in 1972, her father was arrested after an attempt to assassinate the king. General Oufkir was swiftly and summarily executed. Malika, her beautiful mother and her five younger brothers and sisters were seized and thrown into an isolated desert jail. For fifteen years, they had no contact with the outside world, and lived in increasingly barbaric and inhumane conditions.

Like a modern Scheherazade, Malika kept up the spirits of her younger siblings by telling them stories every night about an epic world of her own invention. Then, after fifteen endless years of imprisonment, the Oufkir children managed to dig a tunnel with their bare hands, and made an a