 Malley was born in 1963 to Barbara (née Silverstein) Malley, a New Yorker who worked for the United Nations delegation of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN), and her husband, Simon Malley (1923–2006), an Egyptian-born Jewish journalist who grew up in Egypt and worked as a foreign correspondent for "Al Gomhuria".A communist sympathizer, the elder Malley spent time in New York, writing about international affairs, particularly about nationalist, anti-imperial movements in Africa, and made a key contribution by putting the FLN on the world map.In 1969, the elder Malley moved his family—including son Robert—to France, where he founded the leftist magazine "Africasia" (later known as "Afrique Asia").