"In this novel, Amara Lakhous presents perhaps the greatest addition to the decades of novels that have, with their exquisite art, turned the question of self-awareness and the world upside down, from Tawfiq al-Hakim to Tayeb Salih. It is the question of civilization and history, the question of conflict, integration, and culture. This novel carries it from the Algerian turmoil on the eve of the twentieth century to the space of the Italian other, where the question explodes with a crime, a she-wolf, a howl, and a memory inhabited by Shahryar with death, while Scheherazade rises as a story and a life. With all of this, Amara Lakhous has the right to boast about this unique novel." Nabil Suleiman