Amara Lakhous is a bilingual novelist who writes in Arabic and Italian. He holds a Ph.D. in Humanities from the University of Rome, La Sapienza, with a dissertation titled Living Islam as a Minority in Italy. Before joining the faculty of Italian Studies at Yale, he taught at New York University and the University of Connecticut.
He is the author of six novels, two written in both Arabic and Italian. His best-known works include the acclaimed Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio (2008), Divorce Islamic Style (2012), Dispute Over a Very Italian Piglet (2014), and The Prank of the Good Little Virgin in Via Ormea (2016).
His latest novel in Arabic, Tir al-lil: The Fertility of Evil (originally The Night Bird, 2019), was longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2021. His novels have been translated into ten languages.
Before moving to the U.S. in 2014, he worked in journalism in Algeria and Italy for many years.
At Yale, he has been leading three projects:
- The Yale Mediterranean Series offers a new perspective on rethinking the Mediterranean. So far, the series has hosted four guests: Elaine Mokhtefi, Cristina Ali Farah, Alice Kaplan, and Belal Fadl.
- The Translingual Collective Translation is a collaborative effort with his translators in English, French, and Italian to translate his two Arabic novels, The Fertility of Evil and The Fifth Hyena. He believes translators are often more insightful than editors and uniquely positioned to elevate the original text. This collaboration provided the rare opportunity to rewrite a previously published novel, resulting in a revised new edition. The translators, too, benefited from the shared experience with the author and one another. For him, translation is a matter of choice—each sentence offers many possibilities, and languages behave differently and illuminate one another.
- The Yale Storytelling Lab is an interdisciplinary experiment in learning the art of storytelling and exploring how we narrate across disciplines and perspectives.
Born in Algiers, Algeria, to a Tamazight (Kabyle) family, Lakhous migrated to Italy in 1995 and lived for 18 years between Rome and Turin. His family background and life experiences have made him fluent in Tamazight, Arabic (Classical, Algerian, and other regional varieties), French, Italian, and English. This linguistic “polygamy” is central to his identity, reflecting an openness to cultural fluidity that he promotes in his teaching, writing, and mentoring.
Among his recent honors is one of Italy’s highest recognitions: Honorary Knight of the Order of the Star of Italy.
Research Interests
Arabic literature, Italian literature, creative writing, decolonization, diaspora Islam, identity and diversity, journalism, the Mediterranean, migration, multilingualism, postcolonialism, refugees, self-translation and co-translation, storytelling, and transnational/translingual writers.
