Xavier Le Clerc is a French-Algerian novelist and poet whose work explores identity, displacement and the complex legacy of colonialism. Le Clerc's earlier work also explores themes of memory and migration.
Born Hamid Aït-Taleb in Kabylia, Algeria, he grew up in Normandy. He adopted the name Xavier Le Clerc in his early thirties, a deliberate act of self-reinvention in response to the discrimination he faced.
Xavier Le Clerc holds two master's degrees from the Sorbonne, in humanities and comparative literature. Throughout his literary work, he engages deeply with language, heritage, and the experience of living between cultures.
His third novel, A Man With No Title (2024), was widely acclaimed and won four prestigious literary prizes in France. The book, translated into English by William Rodarmor, is part memoir, part imaginative reconstruction, and all a tribute to Le Clerc's late father, Mohand-Saïd Aït-Taleb.
Inspired by Albert Camus's 1939 account of poverty in Kabylia, Le Clerc traces his father's journey from a brutal childhood in colonial Algeria to the gruelling life of a factory worker in Normandy. His silent and illiterate father is reimagined here with dignity, strength and quiet perseverance.
At the heart of A Man Without a Title is a son's search for connection and understanding — a story of filial love, cultural inheritance and self-discovery. Le Clerc also writes of his journey: from the alienation of growing up as a gay Algerian immigrant in France, to the solace he found in books, to the eventual embrace of a literary life.
The novel is a poignant reflection on how literature can offer refuge and revelation and how naming people, places, and pain shapes identity.
Xavier Le Clerc now divides his time between Paris and Kent with his husband.
Photo credit: X @XavierLeClerc16
