Laila Lalami was born in 1968 in Rabat, Morocco. She is an essayist and the award-winning author of five novels, including The Other Americans. Lalami was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for The Moor’s Account.
What’s your earliest memory?
I was maybe four or five. I was upstairs in my bedroom, getting dressed, when I noticed that my shirt was too small. It was the first time I realised my body was growing.
Who are your heroes?
My grandmother was my childhood hero. She had no formal education, but she was the smartest, wisest and most progressive person I’ve ever known. As an adult, I’ve had ample chance to be inspired by people, but I’m not sure I have a hero. I know a lot of people who do heroic things, though.
What book last changed your thinking?
Kelly Lytle Hernández’s City of Inmates, which traces the history of prisons in Los Angeles from the first jail built by Spanish colonists in 1781 to the high-technology prisons of today. This book gave me a whole new way to think about the city I’ve called home for the last 30 years.
What would be your Mastermind specialist subject?
The Narváez expedition. In 1527, a conquistador by the name of Pánfilo de Narváez left Seville with hundreds of men, women and children, and sailed to Florida to claim it for the Spanish crown. Narváez had hoped to find gold, but instead he got lost and all the conquistadors who followed him perished, except for four survivors, among whom was a Moroccan slave. I wrote a novel about the slave, so I had to become an expert on this period.
What political figure do you look up to?
Nelson Mandela.
In which time and place, other than your own, would you like to live?
Given how few rights women had in the past, even the recent past, I’m going to take my chances with the future.
Who would paint your portrait?
I could never sit still long enough! But if you’ll hire a photographer, I’d love a portrait by Hassan Hajjaj.
What’s your theme tune?
“Respect” by Aretha Franklin.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Never meet your heroes. But I haven’t followed it.
What’s currently bugging you?
Oh, the list is long. People who take calls on speaker-phones in public. People who behave rudely towards service staff. But what’s really bugging me right now is the number of people in the US who think they’re powerless. Power is a dynamic. It isn’t contained in one person and it doesn’t flow in just one direction. We all have power and when we use it, especially in conjunction with others, we can make a difference.
What single thing would make your life better?
Getting nine hours of sleep every night.
When were you happiest?
At nine years old, on vacation with my family in Imouzzer, a hill station in the Middle Atlas. The hotel sat on an orchard, and I can still remember the taste of the apples we picked when the adults weren’t looking.
In another life, what job might you have chosen?
I would have been a historian of the future.
Are we all doomed?
No. In every generation, there are a few brave and visionary souls who save us from ourselves.
Laila Lalami’s “The Dream Hotel” is published by Bloomsbury Circus
[See also: Murder in the care home]
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This article appears in the 12 Mar 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Why Britain isn’t working