Giving prominence to intertextuality and ‘writing back’ as means of intercultural communication, this article examines the intertextual relations between Amara Lakhous' novel Divorzio all'islamica a viale Marconi (2010), a postcolonial response to Pietro Germi's 1961 film Divorzio all'italiana, exploring irony and multivocal narrative use in the novel as intercultural mediation strategies.