"Even those who do not know Italian can finally read a story that tells an important page of the Mediterranean and that concerns all of us". This is what the journalist and writer
Francesca Bellino announces about the release of the Arabic translation in paper form of her award-winning novel "On the horn of the rhinoceros" of 2014. Pending the arrival of the volume in bookstores in countries around the world Arabic, the novel, published by Al Mutawassit with a translation by Saoussen Bou Aicha and revision by Ahmed Somai (former translator of Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose"), will be available for free in electronic format, throughout the month of May 2020, on the online magazinewww.ultrasawt.com , in collaboration with the Arab book platform www.abjjad.com.
"On the horn of the rhinoceros" - Award for the fiction Maria Teresa of Leaves 2015 and Award of the Amalfi Coast Books 2014 - is a story of friendship, freedom and revolution set between an Italy in crisis and a Tunisia in full swing transformation in the aftermath of the expulsion of President Ben Ali on January 14, 2011. The protagonists are Mary , an anthropology researcher, and Meriem , a young woman who left Kairouan to follow her Italian love. They meet in Rome and become friends . One is impatient and reckless, the other thoughtful and cautious. They are discovered similar, roots of the same plant, with a rhinoceros that lives within them ready to limit them, manipulate them, like the power that conditions and imposes its path. Together they will face him, together they can beat him. With this road novel with a surprise ending, the author tells the friendship between two women who seek and find, each in their own way, identity and affectivity, bringing out unusual and curious aspects of two different cultures.
Francesca Bellino, writer, journalist, presenter and radio and television author. He deals with culture and transculturality, the female world and human rights in the Arab-Mediterranean area, with particular attention to the relations between the southern and northern shores of the Mediterranean. She collaborates with various Italian and foreign newspapers and is the author, among others, of the theatrical text "The free song of the Mediterranean stars" (Fusibilia, 2019), of the novel "On the horn of the rhino" (L'asino d'oro, 2014) , of the reportage "The prefix of God. Stories and labyrinths of Once, Buenos Aires" (Infinito, 2008), of the collection of reportages "A look beyond" (Aram, 2010), of the story "Sale" (Lite Editions, 2013), of the essays "It will not be an adventure. Lucio Battisti and Italian jazz" (Elleu, 2004), "He is still alive. Lucio Battisti rises through the media" (Sottotraccia, 2000), of stories published in anthologies and programs and audio-documentaries broadcast on RadioRai3. In 2009 he received the Olaf plaque at the Cronista-Piero Passetti Prize for a report on selective public abortion in India on Ñ, Clarin's cultural supplement. In 2013 he received the Talea Journalistic Award for the Glossary of the Honest Chronicler on Migration published on Limes. In 2015 he represented Italy at the III Euro-Maghreb meeting of writers in Tunis dedicated to the frontier literature organized by the European Union. For the narratives dedicated to the Arab-Mediterranean world he received numerous awards, including in 2015 at the Prata Prize and in 2016 at the Marzani Prize.
