''Scontro-incontro di due culture nel romanzo ''Assalto sul Nilo''di Eros Baldissera''

This study seeks to examine a number of issues, mainly the encounter and clash of Italian and Egyptian identities. Unlike the traditional look which approaches this subject from our own Egyptian perspective, the study proposes to offer a new insight by examining the issue from the point of view of the European "other" – in this case the Italian Arabist Eros Baldissera's novel "Assalto sul Nilo", published in Italy in 2007.
The novel deals with the adventures of an Italian young woman who studies Arabic at the University of Venice. Following graduation, she travels to Egypt where she experiences a deeper, and more daring and risky level of human relationships which shows how bigotry in all its forms is alien to the nature of the Egyptian people. The affair that develops between Lisa., the Italian, and Ali, the Egyptian, a refined and distilled symbol of the interaction of civilizations, unfolds gradually along a turbulent course driven by an acute sense of fear and anger on the part of L. and suspicions and doubts on the part of Ali. It is the story of an encounter between two worlds that are geographically and culturally apart, at first contending, but then proceeding side by side along a risky route which, eventually in a turning point, ends in mutual understanding and intense love.