Born in 1950, Leila Abouzeid studied in Morocco and the US, before returning to Morocco to work as a broadcast and print journalist. In 1992, she switched from journalism to fiction writing, becoming one of the few Moroccan writers to use Arabic rather than French for literary fiction. Her second book, Return to Childhood, was a taboo-breaking memoir that revealed clan secrets and legitimated both the female and the autobiographical voice in Moroccan literature. Her novels The Year of the Elephant and The Last Chapter are semi-autobiographical, transgressive and equally engaged in presenting a female perspective on the absurdities of Moroccan society. The Last Chapter is, in many ways, a more profound Moroccan Bridget Jones’ Diary, charting one single woman’s negotiation of work, romance, family and politics with caustic wit.