Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio: A Novel - Softcover

Lakhous, Amara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1933372613 ISBN 13: 9781933372617

Publisher: Europa Editions, 2008

Synopsis

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 title

About the Authors

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.

Reviews

Lakhous's prize-winning second novel is a social satire and murder mystery concerning an immigrant-filled apartment complex in Rome. After a murder in the building elevator, each occupant of the Piazza Vittorio—among these, Parviz Mansoor Samadi, an Iranian chef who detests pizza; Benedetta Esposito, an aging concierge from Naples; Iqbal Amir Allah, a Bangladeshi shopkeeper—gets a chapter to relate the truth as he or she knows it (or wants it known), apparently to the police. The odd man out, and the main suspect, is Amedo, a man believed by his neighbors to be a native Italian. The tenants are by turns outraged, disillusioned, defensive and afraid, and their frequently wild testimony teases out 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. (Oct.)
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This short but nearly flawless novel offers an intriguing and satisfying blend of crime and literary fiction. When one of the tenants in a Rome apartment building dies, the police suspect another resident and interview each one. The entire book is a series of first-person testimonies—one from each of the residents—alternating with first-person diaries from fellow resident Amedeo, the main suspect who has disappeared without a trace. This literary device works remarkably well and is used without pause from first page to last. While it can be slightly disconcerting for the reader to jump among so many different points of view, the multifaceted character profiles that begin to develop are fascinating, particularly as the monologues discuss the bulding’s elevator, a source of great conflict among all the residents. Recommend to crime readers looking for something unusual or those who prefer character development over plot and action, and literary fiction readers interested in Italy and crime stories. --Jessica Moyer

A cacophony of voices fills this novel, whose putative plot concerns the murder of a man known as the Gladiator in an apartment building in Rome. One by one, the neighbors offer their querulous, seemingly tangential testimony: an Iranian immigrant explains how he sewed his mouth shut when his petition for refugee status was denied; a lonely Peruvian maid confesses, �The TV is my new family�; a grief-stricken woman accuses Chinese restaurateurs of kidnapping her dog; a Milanese professor sees in the daily desecration of the building�s elevator (by litter, by urine) the decline of civilization. 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.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Europa Editions
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1933372613
• ISBN 13: 9781933372617
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144