The novel is a skein of narratives, set across different times and environments, yet traceable back to two family stories.
Mar is the daughter of Miranda, an Argentine woman, and a Somali father she never knew.
Zuhra is Somali, the daughter of Maryam and likewise of an unknown father.
They grew up and live in Rome and are Italian, yet neither knows what her mother tongue truly is, both feeling somehow suspended between two identities.
As Zuhra says

mama speaks to me in her mother tongue.
A noble Somali where every vowel has meaning.
In mama's mouth Somali turns to honey.
In Somali I found the comfort of her womb, in Somali I heard the only lullabies she ever sang to me, in Somali I surely had my first dreams.
But then, each time, in every conversation, word, sigh, the other mother peeks through.
The vinegar Italian of neighborhood markets, the sweet Italian of radio hosts, the serious Italian of lectiones magistrales.
The Italian that I write

.
Yet the theme of identity, and consequently of language, is not the novel's dominant subject.
The book unfolds around the theme of suffering and the rediscovery of oneself.
Mar is a young woman who has lost her lover to suicide, along with her child.
She endures a difficult relationship with her mother, distant and absent, forever locked in her own grief: she was once the partner of one of the executioners, of those who tortured and murdered so many Argentines, perhaps even the woman's own brother.
Zuhra, for her part, was raped as a child after being abandoned by her mother, who for years sought in alcohol a refuge from the social and human destruction of Somalia.
The tragedy of their mothers thus hangs heavy over both young women.
And it is only through the telling of the harrowing trials Miranda and Maryan had to endure that the thread of the relationship between mothers and daughters can be picked up again, allowing the latter to find a balance of their own.
Yet a physical space was necessary, a meeting ground; and this is found in Tunis, in the Arabic language school, where people from so many different worlds gather to study a language that unites so many peoples: a new Esperanto? Will language be what carries us beyond Babel?

This is a complex book.
From a stylistic perspective, the literary device of parallel stories demands a careful reading, as picking up the narrative thread is not always effortless.
The risk of a fragmented narrative is, however, offset by the author's ability to deploy different literary styles: from the idiom typical of young Romans to an expansive and evocative prose, more suited to stories set in the 1960s and 1970s.
The style brings into sharp relief the generational divide between daughters and mothers, as well as between the latter and their families of origin.
The themes addressed by the book are manifold: the burden and the richness of holding multiple identities, the strength of languages as instruments of growth and social cohesion, storytelling as liberation, existential suffering—especially that of women—and the despair of entire peoples.
The novel's center of gravity remains, nevertheless, womanhood, forced to exist in a world of violence and abuse: industrious women, often standing in solidarity, yet all too frequently victims and instruments of male power.

Why read it? The writing is remarkably effective, rich in resonance; the characters captivate, the settings—especially the Somali ones—stir profound emotions, and above all offer food for thought for us Italians: a series of exquisite fragments.

Beyond Babylon