According to Lalami, all the children's books she read as a child were written in French, and she began to write her own stories in French. She spoke Moroccan Arabic at home, and learned Standard Arabic and French in elementary school. Lalami was born in a working-class family in Rabat, Morocco. In 2015 she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for her novel The Moor's Account (2014), about Estevanico, which received strong critical praise and won several other awards. Her first novel, composed of linked stories, was published in 2005. She began publishing her writing in 1996. In 1992 Lalami moved to the United States, where she completed a PhD in linguistics at the University of Southern California.

After earning her Licence de lettres degree in Morocco, she received a fellowship to study in the United Kingdom (UK), where she earned an MA in linguistics.

Her new book, a work of nonfiction called Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America,/i> was published by Pantheon in September 2020.Laila Lalami ( Arabic: ليلى العلمي, born 1968) is a Moroccan-American novelist, essayist, and professor. She is the recipient of a British Council Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and is currently a professor of creative writing at the University of California at Riverside. Her essays and opinion pieces have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, The Nation, the Guardian, the New York Times, and in many anthologies. She is the author of four novels, including The Moor's Account, which won the American Book Award, the Arab-American Book Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and The Other Americans, which was a national bestseller and a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction. She is the recipient of a British Council Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and is currently a professor of creative writing at the Un Laila Lalami was born in Rabat and educated in Morocco, Great Britain, and the United States.

Laila Lalami was born in Rabat and educated in Morocco, Great Britain, and the United States.

The Moor's Account by Laila Lalami