Abstract
This essay analyses the marginalisation of Muslim culture in Europe through a study of Amara Lakhous’s Divorzio all’islamica a viale Marconi (Divorce Islamic Style, 2010). The novel succeeds in showing how the identity of Muslim migrants, far from being flat and monolithic as often depicted in the mass media, has a complexity and reflective depth, a point that Lakhous makes by playing about with Islamophobic stereotypes, which he negates, eludes or emphasises as best fits his purpose. Some important elements in the novel’s satire of racist and culturalist clichés are the position of Muslim women in Italian society, the role of the secret services after 9/11, the history of Italian migration and the demographic changes currently transforming Italian urban space.
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- 1.
See Daniele Comberiati, Scrivere nella lingua dell’altro: La letteratura degli immigrati in Italia (1989–2007) (Bruxelles: Peter Lang, 2010), pp. 45–54; and Chiara Mengozzi, Narrazioni contese: vent’anni di scritture italiane della migrazione (Roma: Carocci, 2013), pp. 5–27.
- 2.
See Francesco Gabrieli and Umberto Scerrato, Gli Arabi in Italia (Milan: Libri Scheiwiller, 1979), pp. 7–121; and Alessandro Vanoli, La Sicilia musulmana (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2012), pp. 4–28.
- 3.
Lakhous, Divorce Islamic Style, trans. by Ann Goldstein (2010; New York: Europa Editions, 2012), p. 141. Further page references to the novel are given in parentheses in the text.
- 4.
See Nagendra Kr. Singh, International Encyclopaedia of Islamic Dynasties: Vol. 40, Spain and Eastern Europe (Nuova Delhi: Anmol Publications, 2000), pp. 3–179.
- 5.
Goody, ‘Islam and Europe’, in Delanty, ed., Europe and Asia, p. 144. As Goody summarises, ‘Islam has played a significant role in Europe since its advent in Spain and the Mediterranean in the eighth century, followed by its advance into Eastern Europe in the fourteenth and its movement into the northern steppes soon afterwards’ (Goody, Islam in Europe (Cambridge: Polity, 2004), p. 8).
- 6.
Hobson, ‘Revealing the Cosmopolitan Side of Oriental Europe: The Eastern Origins of European Civilisation’, in Delanty, ed., Europe and Asia, p. 108.
- 7.
Coppola, ‘“Rented Spaces”: Italian Postcolonial Literature’, in Ponzanesi and Blaagaard, eds, Deconstructing Europe, p. 121.
- 8.
Bassam Tibi, ‘The Return of Ethnicity to Europe via Islamic Migration?: The Ethnicization of the Islamic Diaspora’, in Hsu, ed., Ethnic Europe, p. 127.
- 9.
Lakhous does not claim that the object of the ‘war on terror’ is entirely chimerical. When Mazzari decides to accept the job of undercover agent, he does so because ‘Islamic terrorists do exist, they’re not an invention of the media. They’ve already shown the world what they’re capable of’ (Lakhous, Divorce Islamic Style, p. 33).
- 10.
See Ali’s Brick Lane (2003), Kara’s Selam Berlin (Hello Berlin, 2003) and Abdolah’s Spijkerschrift (My Father’s Notebook, 2000).
- 11.
On this issue, I remember one conversation with Lakhous in which he quoted a possibly apocryphal comment by Vincenzo Consolo, ‘Arabic is one of the languages of the Italian’, remarking that he had kept this in mind while writing the novel.
- 12.
For Lakhous’s discussions of hybridity and language, an important point of reference is the Sudanese writer Tayeb Salih. His well-known novel, Mawsin al-Hijra ilá al-Shamāl (Season of Migration to the North, 1966), is likewise a detective story in which the analysis of immigration and the prejudices that complicate the relationship between Europeans and non-Europeans is more important than plot resolution.
- 13.
Lutz, ‘Limits of European-Ness’, p. 96.
- 14.
Lakhous, Divorce Islamic Style, p. 63. With essentialism and exclusion in Italy being so pronounced, Sofia is led to question the wisdom of her move there: ‘isn’t immigration ultimately a form of gambling? Win everything or lose everything?’ (ibid., pp. 69, 151).
- 15.
Importantly, Sofia also draws attention to the contradictions in Italian culture, most obviously the continuation of domestic violence. As she says at one point, ‘I thought women were victims of violence in war zones, like Afghanistan or Iraq, or in countries where there’s racism […]. But not in Italy! In other words, isn’t Italy still a European country, Western, part of the G-8, and so on, or am I wrong?’ (ibid., pp. 122–3).
- 16.
Passerini, ‘Introductory Note’ to Passerini, ed., Figures d’Europe, p. 17.
- 17.
Lakhous’s treatment of Sofia can also be examined in the light of a number of great Middle Eastern poets and intellectuals. For example, Jamil Sidqi al-Zahawi, a poet of Kurdish origin, has devoted considerable attention to women’s role in society, as has the poet Nāzik al-Malā’ikah, whose Dīwān: Šazāyā wa ramā (Sparks and Ashes, 1979) supported the aspirations of Middle Eastern women to free themselves from prejudice and oppression (see Isabella Camera D’Afflitto, Letteratura araba contemporanea: dalla nahdah a oggi, new edn (1998; Rome: Carocci, 2002), pp. 133–4).
- 18.
Goody, ‘Europe and Islam’, p. 138.
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Comberiati, D. (2016). Amara Lakhous’s Divorce Islamic Style: Muslim Connections in European Culture. In: Hammond, A. (eds) The Novel and Europe. Palgrave Studies in Modern European Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52627-4_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52627-4_17
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