California Italian Studies

This article is devoted to a late-early Italian “migrant” novel, Abdelmalek Smari’s Fiamme in paradiso (2000), and to the two collaborative processes from which this work originated. Intersecting migration and post-colonial studies, Smari’s case is unique in the early production of recent Italian “migrant literature,” as a copy of the original manuscript has been preserved and reveals how the author negotiated his authorship in two collaborations: the first with his teacher of Italian and the second with his literary editor. Situating the novel at the crossroads between Italian, Algerian, and Arabic literary traditions, in this article I study the way in which these two collaborations took place, by comparing the two versions of the text to point out how each participant’s ethical and linguistic choices contributed in shaping the novel’s aesthetics.