Amara Lakhous

After studying philosophy at the University of Algiers and cultural anthropology at the University La Sapienza in Rome, Amara Lakhous has been working as a journalist, with particular attention to questions of (im)migration. In 1994 he worked as a journalist for the Algerian national radio. In Rome, he has also been working as a cultural mediator, interpreter and translator. From 2003 to 2006 he was active as a professional journalist at the press agency Adnkronos International in Rome. In 2006, he won the Flaiano Award. Lakhous is mostly known for being a bilingual author (Arabic and Italian). He made his debut as an author with Le cimici e il pirata, translated by Francesco Leggio (Narrativa. Proposte series, Arlem, Rome, 1999), followed by Come farti allattare dalla lupa senza che ti morda (Al-ikhtilaf, Algiers, 2003) and Scontro di civiltà per un ascensore a Piazza Vittorio (Edizioni e/o, Rome, 2006), which won the Racalmare Leonardo Sciascia literary prize and was the subject of a film directed by Isotta Toso. Further publications include: Divorce all’islamica a viale Marconi (Edizioni e/o, Rome, 2010), Un pirata piccolo piccolo (Edizioni e/o, Rome, 2011), Contesa per un maialino italianissimo a San Salvario (Edizioni e/o, Rome, 2013), La zingarata della verginella di Via Ormea (Edizioni e/o, Rome, 2014). In 2019 he publishes The Night Bird (Manshurat al-Hibr. 2019), which entered the running for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2021. He currently lives in New York where he is a Visiting Professor at New York University and teaches Italian.