Amor Ben Salem

Amor Ben Salem is a Tunisian Arabic writer.

Biography Amor Ben Salem was born in the village of Métouia in the southeastern province of Gabes in Tunisia where he attended his primary education and secondary education in Gabes. He obtained a diploma in philosophy from Tunis in 1957 after which he flew to Cairo to attend journalism courses at the University of Cairo from 1958 to 1959. He then flew to Beirut to commence his higher education at the High Teachers Institution (Lebanese University), obtaining his bachelor's and master's degrees in the Arabic language and literature in 1960. Upon his return to Tunisia, he had taught in several high schools until 1965, the same year in which he traveled to France to join the University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle to commence his doctorate degree in Arabic grammar, which he completed in 1968 and returned to Tunisia. Amor Ben Salem pursued his interest in teaching by joining the High Teachers Institute in Tunis, and later became a full-time professor at the Social and Economic Research and Studies Centre (CERES) from 1972. There, he established and supervised a department devoted to literary research, which remained active even after his retirement in October 1993.

From his youth onward, Ben Salem was also a dedicated writer and poet, producing prose in both literary and dialect Arabic. He published numerous short stories, novels, plays, children’s works, and critical studies. In addition, he compiled a biographical dictionary of Tunisian writers and edited anthologies of Tunisian literature.