Amara Lakhous

Amara Lakhous is a writer born in Algiers in 1970. Currently living in New York, he writes in Arabic and Italian. He has a degree in philosophy from the University of Algiers and obtained a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Rome and lived in Italy for 18 years. His first novel in Arabic was titled Bedbugs and the Pirate (1999) and his second, How to Breastfeed from a She-Wolf Without Being Bitten (2003) was rewritten in Italian and published with a different title: Clash of Civilizations over an Elevator a Piazza Vittorio (2006). This novel was translated into eight languages and made into a film in 2010 directed by Isotta Toso. It also won Italy’s Flaiano International Award and the Racalmare – Leonardo Sciascia Prize in 2006 and the Algerian Librarians’ Prize in 2008. He has published other novels in Arabic: Little Cairo (2010) and The Night Bird (2019); and in Italian: Divorce Islamic Style(2010), Dispute over an Very Italian Piglet (2012), The Prank of the Good Little Virgin in Via Ormea (2014), which have been published in multiple languages.