Laila Lalami is a Moroccan American novelist and essayist known for writing about migration, citizenship, and power – subjects she approaches with a steady eye for how political systems press into private lives. Born in Rabat, Morocco, she moved to the United States for college, later earning a PhD in linguistics at the University of Southern California, and now teaches at the University of California, Riverside. Across classrooms and pages alike, she has become a vital voice in contemporary American letters.
She is the author of Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, The Moor’s Account, and The Other Americans, as well as the recent novel The Dream Hotel, which imagines a near-future world shaped by data collection and state surveillance and was named a best book of the year by Time, NPR, and The Globe. Lalami’s work frequently centers on characters negotiating borders – geographic, cultural, and technological – and asking what freedom looks like when it is constrained.
Lalami – soon be on Australian shores as part of the Sydney Opera House’s All About Women festival on 8 March 2026 – sat down with RUSSH to talk about the books that have stayed with her, challenged her assumptions, and helped shape her sense of what fiction can do.
The last book I read …
On Morrison by Namwali Serpell.
On my bedside table: I am currently reading …
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt.
My favourite book of all time …
Blindness by José Saramago.
The literary character I most identify with is …
Gregor Samsa [from Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis].
The book that changed my life is …
The Simple Past by Driss Chraibi.
The best book I ever received is…
Desertion by Abdulrazak Gurnah.
The book I would give as a gift is …
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison.
Growing up, the best book on my bookshelf was …
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
A writer I admire the most is…
Toni Morrison.
My favourite living author is …
J.M. Coetzee.
A book everyone should read at least once is…
A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul.
My favourite reading spot is…
My sofa, with a cup of green tea.
Laila Lalami will appear at The Wheeler Centre in Melbourne on 4 March and the All About Women festival at the Sydney Opera House on 8 March.
