La sponda oltre l'inferno

How many more lives will be lost in the Mediterranean? And what will become of the migrants who reach the shore beyond hell? In this gripping new novel, Younis Tawfik, Iraqi by birth and one of Italy's leading experts on the Middle East, asks the reader these and many other questions. He does so through the destinies of five survivors of a shipwreck off the coast of Libya, who meet sitting in a circle under the moonlight of Lampedusa. The protagonists, four men and a woman from different African countries, met in a detention center on the outskirts of Tripoli, the last stop on their deadly journeys to safety. Together, they risked death at the hands of cruel jailers, under the blows of hunger, the spread of disease, and, finally, among the waves of the Mediterranean. A polyphonic, deeply human, and heartbreaking tale, where mutual testimony becomes catharsis and restores these wounded men and women to their true humanity.

Author: Younis Tawfik

He was born in Mosul, Iraq. In 1979, he moved to Turin, where he graduated in Literature in 1986. He then devoted himself to the dissemination of Arabic literature (translating authors such as Gibran) and contributing as a columnist to newspapers such as "Repubblica," "Il Mattino," and "Il Messaggero." He currently chairs the Italian-Arab Cultural Center in Turin "Dar al-Hikma" and is a member of the Islamic Council in Italy. He has published books of poetry and various essays and novels, primarily for Bompiani. La straniera (2000, winner of the Grinzane Cavour Prize) was adapted into a film of the same name, directed by Marco Turco. For Oligo, he published La sponda oltre l'inferno (2021, runner-up at the Robinson Tournament of Repubblica).