Najat El Hachmi was born in Morocco and moved with her family to Catalonia as a child. Her first book, Jo tambe soc catalana (I am Catalan too, 2004), El Hachmi deals with the issue of identity, and the growth of her sense of belonging to her new country. Her novel L’ultim patriarca (The Last Patriarch) tells the story of a conflict between a despotic patriarch and his daughter, who breaks with traditional values of the old country to adapt to the new ones.