Amara Lakhous: The Italian Identity

"Bariberi Lecture: Italian Identity in the Making - Migration and Culture" 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. He was influenced from an early age by authors like Mahfouz, Flaubert and Hemingway, and 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. 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, Italy.