In a book club and starting to plan your reads for next year? Check out our 2025 picks.

Amara Lakhous Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Amara Lakhous

Amara Lakhous

How to pronounce Amara Lakhous: Lahk-house

Amara Lakhous Biography

Amara Lakhous was born in 1970 in Algiers, the sixth of nine children. His parents were Berbers, and they sent him to a Koran school for four years where he learned classical Arabic. He learned French at junior school, which meant that he had the role of mediating between his Algerian and his French relatives. After finishing school decided to study at the Faculty for Philosophy in Algiers, where he also delved into the roots of his Algerian identity, religion, the civil war and systems of male superiority. In 1995, with a manuscript in his luggage, he moved to Rome.

Lakhous earned a second degree at the University La Sapienza in Cultural Anthropology. His first manuscript, which he had written in Arabic when he was 23, was published in 1999 in a bilingual edition: Le cimici e il pirata (The Bug and the Pirate). His second book was published in Italy in 2006: Scontro di civiltà per un ascensore a Piazza Vittorio (Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio). It looks at the theme of identity in a multicultural environment: "I lived for six years on the Piazza Vittorio, it's a kind of laboratory for the future, the prototype of intellectual cohabitation."

Lakhous doesn't only use the unadulterated perspective of the immigrant to focus on the central issues which natives overlook. He also experiments with language by enriching his Italian prose with expressions, imagery and terms from his original language: "I Arabise the Italian and Italianise the Arabic."

Amara Lakhous has been awarded, among others, the Premio Flaiano per la narrativa in 2006 and Algeria's most prestigious literary award, the Prix des libraires Algeriens in 2008. The author lives in Rome.

Amara Lakhous's website

This bio was last updated on 10/24/2016. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Books by this Author

Books by Amara Lakhous at BookBrowse
Divorce Islamic Style jacket
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Amara Lakhous but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Celina Baljeet Basra

    Celina Baljeet Basra

    Celina Baljeet Basra is a writer and cultural worker based in Berlin. She is a founder of the Department of Love, a curatorial collective. Happy is her first novel. (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Divorce Islamic Style

    Try:
    Happy
    by Celina Baljeet Basra

  • Alina Bronsky

    Alina Bronsky

    Alina Bronsky (a pseudonym) was born in Yekaterinburg, an industrial town at the foot of the Ural Mountains in central Russia. She moved to Germany when she was thirteen. Broken Glass Park, nominated for one of Europe's most ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Divorce Islamic Style

    Try:
    Broken Glass Park
    by Alina Bronsky

We recommend 4 similar authors

View all 4 Read-Alikes

Non-members can see 2 results. Become a member
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket
    The House of Doors
    by Tan Twan Eng
    Every July, I take on the overly ambitious goal of reading all of the novels chosen as longlist ...
  • Book Jacket: The Puzzle Box
    The Puzzle Box
    by Danielle Trussoni
    During the tumultuous last days of the Tokugawa shogunate, a 17-year-old emperor known as Meiji ...
  • Book Jacket
    Something, Not Nothing
    by Sarah Leavitt
    In 2020, after a lifetime of struggling with increasingly ill health, Sarah Leavitt's partner, ...
  • Book Jacket
    A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens
    by Raul Palma
    Raul Palma's debut novel A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens introduces Hugo Contreras, who came to the ...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Pony Confidential
    by Christina Lynch

    In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.

Who Said...

To make a library it takes two volumes and a fire. Two volumes and a fire, and interest. The interest alone will ...

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

H I O the G

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.