Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio
A Novel
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The immigrant tenants of a building in Rome offer skewed accounts of a murder in this prize-winning satire by the Algerian-born Italian author (Publishers Weekly).
Piazza Vittorio is home to a polyglot community of immigrants who have come to Rome from all over the world. But when a tenant is murdered in the building's elevator, the delicate balance is thrown into disarray. As each of the victim's neighbors is questioned by the police, readers are offered an all-access pass into the most colorful neighborhood in contemporary Rome.
With language as colorful as the neighborhood it describes, each character takes his or her turn "giving evidence." Their various stories reveal much about the drama of racial identity and the anxieties of a life spent on society's margins, but also bring to life the hilarious imbroglios of this melting pot Italian culture.
"Their frequently wild testimony teases out intriguing psychological and social insight alongside a playful whodunit plot."--Publishers Weekly
About this Author
Amara Lakhous was born in Algiers in 1970. He has a degree in philosophy from the University of Algiers and another in cultural anthropology from the University la Sapienza, Rome. He recently completed a Ph.D. thesis entitled Living Islam as a Minority." His first novel, Le cimici e il pirata ( Bedbugs and the Pirate ), was published in 1999. Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio, winner of Italy's prestigious Flaiano prize, is his second novel. He currently resides in New York.
Ann Goldstein has translated into English all of Elena Ferrante's books, including the New York Times bestseller, The Story of the Lost Child, which was shortlisted for the MAN Booker International Prize. She has been honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship and is the recipient of the PEN Renato Poggioli Translation Award. She lives in New York.
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Format: Trade paperback
Pages: 144
Publisher: Europa Editions
Published: 2008-10-10
Reviews
Praise for Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio Recalls Naguib Mahfouz's epic about slices of Egyptian popular life in the 'The Cairo Trilogy' of the 1950s. The rich variety of characters and psychological understanding place Mr. Lakhous in the tradition of Balzac and Dickens." -The Washington Times "The author's real subject is the heave and crush of modern, polyglot Rome, and he renders the jabs of everyday speech with such precision that the novel feels exclaimed rather than written." -The New Yorker "Intriguing psychological and social insight alongside a playful whodunit plot, exposing the power of fear, racial prejudice and cultural misconception to rob a neighborhood of its humanity." -Publishers Weekly "No recent Italian novel so elegantly and directly confronts the 'new Italy.'" -Philadelphia Inquirer "What's memorable about Lakhous' novel is what he shows us of an often inward-looking nation confronting the teeming vibrancy of multicultural life." -NPR's Fresh Air "A satirical, enigmatic take in the racial tensions that afflict present-day Europe." -Brooklyn Rail "
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