"Somali by origin, Italian by vocation," Igiaba Scego graduated in Foreign Languages and Literature from the University of Rome "La Sapienza." She divides her time between fiction, journalism, and academic research. Her works constantly seek a point of balance between her two cultures of belonging: her maternal one and her adoptive one. In 2003, she won the Eks&tra Prize with the short story Salsiccia ("Sausage") and published her debut novel, La nomade che amava Alfred Hitchcock, followed in 2008 by Oltre Babilonia, a saga set between Somalia, Italy, and Argentina. Subsequently, she continued to publish essays, novels, and short stories (La mia casa è dove sono, 2011—winner of the Mondello Prize—, Roma negata, Adua, Caetano Veloso, Prestami le ali), which have been translated into several languages, including her most recent works La linea del colore (Bompiani, 2020), Cassandra a Mogadiscio (Bompiani, 2023), and Figli della foresta (Becco Giallo, 2026). In 2019, she edited the short story anthology Future. Il domani narrato dalle voci di oggi for Effequ; between 2021 and 2024, she co-edited the two landmark volumes of the Africana anthology for Feltrinelli alongside with Chiara Piaggio. She writes for the Italian weekly Internazionale.

(photo: © Simona Filippini)