Mohamed Choukri was born in 1935 in Ayt Chiker, a small Berber-speaking village in the Rif near Nador in Morocco. Raised in an extremely poor family, he ran away at the age of eleven and became a street child in Tangier, where he lived in the poorest neighbourhoods of the city, rubbing shoulders with misery, violence, prostitution, and drugs. At the age of twenty, he was arrested and imprisoned by the Spanish who occupied the north of Morocco. During his stay in prison, he met an independence supporter who taught him to read and write, with success, as he would later become a teacher.

In the 1960s, in cosmopolitan Tangier, he met Paul Bowles, Jean Genet, and Tennessee Williams. He began to be published in 1966 (in Al-adab (Literature), a monthly from Beirut, the short story Al-Unf ʿala al-shati, that is to say, Violence on the Beach). His international success came with the translation into English by Paul Bowles of Al-khoubz Al-Hafi (For Bread Alone, Peter Owen editions) in 1973. The book was translated into French by Tahar Ben Jelloun in 1980 (Maspero editions), published in Arabic in 1982, and banned in Morocco from 1983 to 2000.

His main works were the autobiographical trilogy begun with For Bread Alone, followed by Zaman Al-Akhtaâ aw Al-Shouttar (The Time of Errors or the Wisdom of the Street, 1992) then Visages. He also wrote a series of short stories in the 1960s-1970s (Majnoun Al-Ward, The Madman of the Roses, 1980; Al-Khaima, The Tent, 1985), as well as collections of memoirs concerning his meetings with the writers Paul Bowles, Jean Genet, and Tennessee Williams (Jean Genet and Tennessee Williams in Tangier, 1992; Jean Genet in Tangier, 1993; Jean Genet, suite and end, 1996; Paul Bowles, the Recluse of Tangier, 1997).

On 15 November 2003, at the military hospital in Rabat, Mohamed Choukri succumbed to cancer. He was buried at the Marshan cemetery in Tangier on 17 November in the presence of the Minister of Culture, high officials, personalities from the world of culture, and the spokesperson for the royal palace. Before dying, he created the Mohamed Choukri Foundation (president, Mohamed Achaâri), owning his copyrights, manuscripts, and personal work. He provided a lifetime pension for his maid, Fathia, who spent nearly 22 years working for him.