Spectacular. ( )

This book follows two main protagonists: Safia/Sofia, a young Egyptian woman in an unhappy marriage living in Rome and Christian/Issa, a Sicilian man posing as a recent Tunisian immigrant to learn about two terror cells planning an attack in Rome. The chapters alternate their perspectives, and the tone is lightly comedic, drawing the portraits of their friends and acquaintances. The writing was full of references and sayings, which I enjoyed. (Honestly, the football references were probably the hardest to get.) Sofia's story is a little more compelling than Issa's. She has clear wants and desires and he kind of ... floats along as the plot moves around him. It's a short book with that slightly open ending that you see in a lot of literary fiction. I read it very quickly in one sitting, as it's less than 200 pages. It touches on identity, immigration, feminism, and ideas of home and family. The characters argue about these ideas from many different perspectives. Recommended. ( )

A telling of how immigrants live in Italy, thinly veiled behind some plot. ( )

Great read about a immigrant enclave in Rome and the nuances of modern Muslim culture, through the eyes of an Italian "Orientalist" spy disguised as a non-observant Tunisian immigrant (phew!) ( )

Those who enjoyed Lakhous' previous Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio can cheer over the fact that he wasn't a one-book-and-out author. Divorce Islamic Style—the title is a clear play on Divorce, Italian Style, the '60s Mastroianni film—has the same underlying theme of ethnic and religious prejudice as its predecessor, and wraps it in the same laugh-out-loud humor.

In fact, it goes one better in giving us Safia (or Sofia if, as most people, you don't bother to listen to her pronunciation) who is one of the most engaging characters I've encountered in a while. She's a young Egyptian woman who has come to Italy with her husband, a man she doesn't particularly love or even care for. She wants some independence, but her husband wants her to wear the veil. She wants money to help out a sister who is suffering, but her husband doesn't want her to work. She wants a better life for her daughter, but her husband just wants a son...and Italians just seem to want immigrants to go home. She meets all of this with a combination of intelligence, pluck and good nature that won me over from her first chapter.

Safia both articulates and embodies the immigrant problem, the absolute requirement to be successful so as not to fail all those who sacrificed to get you into the new country. Pitted against this are prejudices, both in the host country and the culture you've brought with you, that make this difficult. She's framed in by a cast of colorful characters, ranging from young, illegal immigrant men who are hanging on by their fingernails to the other major character of the novel: Christian, a young Italian of Tunisian descent who is asked by the Italian police to infiltrate the Muslim community in search of terrorists.

I liked Christian, but I didn't love him the way I did Safia; there's a little too much weakness in his character. However, his newcomer perspective allows us to meet the various characters and his adventures, which border on the bizarre at certain moments, serve as the glue to bind together the plot lines.

Lakhous' second book was better than his first, the right direction to go. I look forward to his third. ( )