Moroccan-born author tops Italy’s bestseller chart with new novel

Every weekend, her teacher Gabriella asks her to make up a story. Rokia is already struggling to finish her homework. At first, the extra assignment feels like a punishment. Yet it is this that sparks her love of writing.

At home, her Moroccan immigrant parents have difficulty reading and writing in Italian. The young girl has to learn much on her own. She also finds inspiration in her grandmother, who stayed in Morocco and tells her stories over the phone. Rokia likes to imagine different endings for them.

She shared these memories with La Repubblica in June 2024. She also spoke of her loneliness at school and her difficulty finding her place between her Moroccan roots and her everyday life in Italy.

From Wattpad to the top of the bestseller chart

In 2016, Rokia began publishing on Wattpad under the pseudonym Clarine Jay. Her stories quickly found an audience and amassed millions of reads. In 2022, her first novel, The Truth Untold, was published in bookstores, followed by Sindrome. By June 2024, the two books had already sold 150 000 copies, according to La Repubblica.

On 13 October 2026, she published Dangerous Love with Magazzini Salani. The new novel tells the story of Caroline Night, a young woman who agrees to work for a wealthy family to help her sick mother. There, she meets Damon Piers.

The book went straight to the top of the iBUK chart, compiled from sales across the Arianna+ bookstore network for the week of 12 to 18 October. La Repubblica’s Robinson supplement ranked it second in its own chart on 24 October.

Rokia continues to publish under her Arabic first name. In 2024, she said she wanted to show children from immigrant families that they, too, can see a name like theirs on the cover of a book.