Amara Lakhous

Issa is actually an Italian young man named Christian. He has a perfect command of Arabic. Consequently, the secret services decide to recruit him and dispatch him to Viale Marconi in Rome under the guise of a Tunisian immigrant. His mission is to gather intelligence on a suspected terrorist cell, allegedly operating out of a call center. Sofia—or rather Safia—is an Egyptian woman who married

The Italian edition is a revision, also undertaken by the author, of the original Arabic publication of 2003, which bore another title: “how to be suckled by the she-wolf without her biting you.” The two titles, in Italian and in Arabic, constitute two possible interpretive keys to the book. The setting is Piazza Vittorio in Rome, the multicultural venue par excellence, and specifically an apart