The Italian by Shukri Mabkhout won the prestigious Arab Booker Prize for an outstanding piece of literature produced in 2015 by the 59-year-old professor of Arabic, Literature, and Discourse Analysis at Manouba University. He is known for a number of fine works of literary criticism. The book was banned by UAE for reasons that were never disclosed officially. As a reader of this phenomenal book, it becomes apparently easier to guess the ressons of it getting banned.