ROME -- Francesca Bellino, prize-winning journalist and travel writer, certainly capitalises on her past experience in this perceptive and fast-moving narrative. A novel set during the demise of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali which set off the Arab Spring, it tells of the close and intense friendship between two women, Meriem and Mary. The latter, a young Italian anthropologist, the former, a Tunisian who fled to Italy out of love, both share history together despite pronounced cultural differences, and it is with their combined sense of courage and self-introspection that they both set out to find out who they truly are.

 Upon hearing of Meriem’s death, Mary arrives in Tunisia, where her friend's funeral is being held. Tunis, the capital, is barely visible among clouds of tear gas and burnt heaps of rubbish, whilst the oppresive way of life for women does little to help Mary’s sense of confusion. Of one thing, however, Mary is sure: if she is to reach Al-Qayrawan, her dead friend’s native city just south of Tunis, she will have to take a taxi. So she jumps on the first one she finds and its driver, Hedi, becomes a sort of guide to her, the Virgil to her Dante, taking her on a journey as metaphysical as it is literal. It is during this journey that, with his help, she makes her way across a country torn between the new-found liberty and protests of a state in full revolutionary throttle. 

 Bellino interweaves seamlessly between this present situation and her past, as she introduces flashbacks to time spent in Rome with Meriem, as well as to the fateful holiday in Al-Qayrawan, where she fell in love with Farouk, the man who led her to Italy in the first place and without whom the two women would never have met. As the narrative gradually lays bare Mary’s past, the protagonist goes through a process of self-discovery and comes to know her own limits amid the surrounding disorder, with an ending that is bound to shock the reader.

 The novel’s vitality is, in part, fuelled by autobiographical experience. The author spent considerable time in Tunisia and, although she found love there, she evidently did not fall in love with the place, which she calls the "very kingdom of disorder." The dichotomy certainly helps to explain the novel’s contrast between Mary’s revelatory sentimental journey, and her somewhat less pleasant experience of the country’s revolutionary chaos. 

 All this, delivered in a refreshing and engaging manner. With a stripped-back narrative style and vivid dialogue that only benefit from Bellino’s experience as a journalist, the plot gains a real sense of momentum as we follow Mary’s journey through Tunisia. The overall result, in sum, is one that is as breathtaking to the reader, as its events are to our protagonist.