Explore our new BookBrowse Community Forum!

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: Our Evenings
    Our Evenings
    by Alan Hollinghurst
    Alan Hollinghurst's novel Our Evenings is the fictional autobiography of Dave Win, a British ...
  • Book Jacket: Graveyard Shift
    Graveyard Shift
    by M. L. Rio
    Following the success of her debut novel, If We Were Villains, M. L. Rio's latest book is the quasi-...
  • Book Jacket: The Sisters K
    The Sisters K
    by Maureen Sun
    The Kim sisters—Minah, Sarah, and Esther—have just learned their father is dying of ...
  • Book Jacket: Linguaphile
    Linguaphile
    by Julie Sedivy
    From an infant's first attempts to connect with the world around them to the final words shared with...

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...

Second hand books are wild books...

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

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

F the M

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.