I really enjoyed reading this little gem of a book: Dispute Over a Very Italian Piglet, by Amara Lakhous. The author writes in Italian but is originally from Algeria. This is a very tongue-in-cheek "mystery" which also quite cleverly reveals all the multicultural issues becoming so real in modern Europe. The narrator is a journalist who invents a story to cover his own tracks in being out of the country when he should be working; one hilarious "Deep Throat" becomes two, then three, as he has claimed a recent spate of killings as a gang war between Albanians and Romanians. Meanwhile his Nigerian neighbor Joseph is trying to save his pet pig Gino who somehow was photographed inside the little mosque in San Salvario and raised the shackles of Muslims. All of this is a vehicle to expose the different viewpoints and prejudices which run rampant in all our societies. Lots of acerbic witty repartee but also much wisdom: "Working as a journalist, I've come to understand that the reality we confront has neither value nor weight. It's the imaginary that governs our actions, or, rather, reactions. We are increasingly insecure, frightened, vulnerable, unreasonable. Someone should explain to me, for example, why the majority of Italians consider immigrants the primary cause of their lack of security when, at the same time, they entrust the persons dearest to them, children and old people, to immigrant caretakers and housekeepers. What can be done? Must we be satisfied with a false, fleeting reality, devoid of concrete facts but loaded with fantasies and prejudices?" Did Albert Einstein really say it is easier to split an atom than a prejudice? Anyway, this book was a delightful present from my daughter Dorothée, and it cheered me considerably!

on the bench near the entrances