Hubert Haddad was born in Tunis in 1947, and has never forgotten his Jewish and Berber origins. He was raised in Paris and published his first book of poems at the age of twenty. In his work, consisting of more than fifty novels, plays, and essays, he explores the behaviour of human beings in extremis. Hubert Haddad has won several awards including the Prix Renaudot Poche 2009 and the Prix des cinq continents de la Francophonie 2008 for a previous novel, entitled, Palestine.

The fate of Alam, the young Afghani boy, is crushed by roving war and exile, between Kandahar and Paris. Opium Poppy is a novel on the flouted innocence of children, thrust into a world gone mad…. He thinks he has found a safe haven by travelling to France, the land of ‘human rights’….  Kandahar’s opium becomes heroin in Paris, sowing an endless curse. Hubert Haddad’s work, steeped in melancholy poetry casts the reader into the universal drama of youth, betrayed.