Makhlouf Bouaich was born in 1955 in Akabiou, a mountain village in Algeria. After primary school, he attended the Ibn Sina high school in Bejaia, which he experienced as his first uprooting. But it was in this very city that he had the opportunity to read books. The high school library was free, and he devoured one book after another. Early on, inspired by the works of Mouloud Feraoun and Victor Hugo, he felt a pressing need to write in order to emulate them. But it was poetry that attracted him, and it was poetry that he embraced. A great admirer of Victor Hugo, Makhlouf nevertheless wrote poems more inspired by Baudelaire. His writings ended up in the trash, but he didn't give up; he started again every day and even tried his hand at writing a novel. It was only during his military service that he finished his first work, a novel about an impossible love between the son of an Algerian factory worker and a French woman. This novel was never published; it remained a manuscript (written in pen on loose sheets of paper). His first attempt at publication, in 1980 in Algeria, ended in failure. The president of the SNED (National Syndicate of Publishers) reading committee met with him but did not share the ideas expressed in the texts. He did, however, offer to publish it in a collection of two to five poems. Makhlouf Bouaich declined, as he did not want to be included in a collection with others whose opinions he did not share. In 1996, Makhlouf Bouaich left Algeria for good to settle in France, after having first lived in Libya, where he finished two novels, one of which was published in Paris under the title "Mémoires remuées" (Stirred Memories). He worked various jobs, including electrician, in Libya, where French was virtually nonexistent, and also in France, where any level of education acquired elsewhere was very rarely recognized. Makhlouf Bouaich is a human rights activist. For over three years, he served as general secretary of the LDH (Human Rights League) section in Melun and the surrounding area. Committed to defending women's rights, he worked for five years with an association that supports women victims of domestic violence, providing shelter, social, legal, and administrative assistance. Through all these experiences, Makhlouf Bouaich found fertile ground for writing, allowing him to externalize what constantly weighed on him inside.