Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio - Softcover

Amara Lakhous

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1933372613 ISBN 13: 9781933372617

Publisher: Europa Editions, 2008

Synopsis

A small, culturally mixed community living in an apartment building in the centre of Rome is thrown into disarray when one of the neighbours is murdered. As each of the victim's neighbours is questioned, the reader is offered an all-access pass into the most colourful neighbourhood in contemporary Rome. Each character recounts his or her story - revealing the dramas of emigration, immigration, and the fears and misunderstandings of a life spent on society's margins, abused by mainstream culture's fears, preconceptions and insensitivities.

About this title

Review

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 

About the Author

Amara Lakhous was born in Algiers in 1970. Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio won Italy's prestigious Flaiano Prize and prompted the critic Carlin Romano to ask in the Philadelphia Inquirer, "Do we have an Italian Alberto Camus on our hands?". Lakhous is also the author of Divorce Islamic Style and Dispute Over a Very Italian Piglet.

Ann Goldstein is an editor at The New Yorker. Her translations for Europa Editions include novels by Amara Lakhous, Alessandro Piperno, and Elena Ferrante's bestselling My Brilliant Friend. She lives in New York.

About this edition

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