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Amara Lakhous Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

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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

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Books by this Author

Books by Amara Lakhous at BookBrowse
Divorce Islamic Style jacket
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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

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    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

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