Albert Memmi

Albert Memmi wrote 'The Colonizer and the Colonized' (1957), the essay that described colonial rule as a relationship binding both sides, which Jean-Paul Sartre prefaced and which became a standard text of decolonisation; his novel 'The Pillar of Salt' (1953) won the Prix Fénéon. He became a professor at the Sorbonne and later directed studies at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences. He was born in Tunis, one of thirteen children of Maïra Sarfati, a Tunisian Berber Jew, and Fradji Memmi, a Tunisian-Italian Jewish saddle maker, and grew up speaking French and Judeo-Tunisian Arabic.