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Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio
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
Dispute Over a Very Italian Piglet
An Italian journalist gets wrapped up in the criminality and cultural controversies of modern Turin in this “very funny” satirical novel (The New York Times). It’s October 2006. The northern Italian town of Turin has been rocked by a series of murders involving Albanians and Romanians, and journalist Enzo Laganà is determined to get to the bottom of the crime wave—even if he must invent a few sources to do so. But first he’s been conscripted to mediate the issue of a pig running loose in a mosque. Gino the pig belongs to Enzo’s Nigerian immigrant neighbor, Joseph. The Muslim community wants Gino killed, an animal rights group wants him saved, and Joseph is pleading his pig’s innocence. As Enzo navigates various calamities large and small, he scrambles to keep track of his lies even as he uncovers some uncomfortable truths about contemporary, multicultural Italy. “This very funny novel examines a town’s heightened ignorance and hostility toward foreigners, and what it means to be a “true” Italian, even if the native in question is a small pig.” —The New York Times
Divorce Islamic Style
It's 2005. The Italian secret service has received intel that a group of Muslim immigrants based in Rome's Viale Marconi neighborhood is planning a terrorist attack. Christian Mazzari, a young Sicilian court translator who speaks perfect Arabic, goes undercover to infiltrate the group and learn who its leaders are. Christian poses as Issa, a recently arrived Tunisian in search of looking for a place to sleep and a job. He soon meets Sofia, a young Egyptian immigrant whose life with her husband, Said a.k.a. Felice, an architect who has reinvented himself as a pizza cook, is anything but fulfilling. In alternating voices, with an anthropologist's keen eye and sparkling wit Lakhous examines the commonplaces and stereotypes typical of life in multicultural societies. Divorce Islamic Style mixes the rational and the absurd as it describes the conflicts and contradictions of today's world. Marvelous set pieces, episodes rich in pathos, brilliant dialogue, and mordant folk proverbs combine as the novel moves towards an unforgettable and surprising finale that will have readers turning back to the first page of Lakhous's stunning novel to begin the ride all over again.
The Prank of the Good Little Virgin of Via Ormea
A fun and farcical novel, this new "whodunit" about life in multicultural Italy by Amara Lakhous will delight fans of Lakhous' earlier bestseller, Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio, and readers of novels such as The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany. Bittersweet, like any self-respecting Italian comedy, The Prank is a Pirandellian exploration of identity in today's multicultural, polyglot societies. Lakhous draws inspiration from everyday reality, describing his approach to writing as "total literature," a term he has adapted from soccer's "total football." He plays in attack, describing in this work the realities of an Italy of the future with colorful characters portrayed in limpid but lively prose. From the Trade Paperback edition.
Contemporary Italian Diversity in Critical and Fictional Narratives
Contemporary Italian Diversity in Critical and Fictional Narratives brings together creative literary works and scholarly articles. Both address the changes and challenges to identity formation in an Italy marked by the migrations, populism, nationalism, and xenophobia, and analyze diversity and the affirmation of belonging.
Adua
“Utterly sublime . . . Aduatells a gripping story of war, migration and family, exposing us to the pain and hope that reside in each encounter” (Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King). Adua, an immigrant from Somalia, has lived in Italy nearly forty years. She came seeking freedom from a strict father and an oppressive regime, but her dreams of becoming a film star ended in shame. A searing novel about a young immigrant woman’s dream of finding freedom in Rome and the bittersweet legacies of her African past. “Lovely prose and memorable characters make this novel a thought-provoking and moving consideration of the wreckage of European oppression.” —Publishers Weekly (starred ...
Italian Mobilities
The Italian nation-state has been defined by practices of mobility. Tourists have flowed in from the era of the Grand Tour to the present, and Italians flowed out in massive numbers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: Italians made up the largest voluntary emigration in recorded world history. As a bridge from Africa to Europe, Italy has more recently been a destination of choice for immigrants whose tragic stories of shipwreck and confinement are often in the news. This first-of-its-kind edited volume offers a critical accounting of those histories and practices, shedding new light on modern Italy as a flashpoint for mobilities as they relate to nationalism, imperialism, globalization, and consumer, leisure, and labor practices. The book’s eight essays reveal how a country often appreciated for what seems immutable - its classical and Renaissance patrimony - has in fact been shaped by movement and transit.
A Companion to Federico Fellini
A groundbreaking academic treatment of Fellini, provides new, expansive, and diverse perspectives on his films and influence The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Federico Fellini presents new methodologies and fresh insights for encountering, appreciating, and contextualizing the director’s films in the 21st century. A milestone in Fellini scholarship, this volume provides contributions by leading scholars, intellectuals, and filmmakers, as well as insights from collaborators and associates of the Italian director. Scholarly yet readable essays explore the fundamental aspects of Fellini’s works while addressing their contemporary relevance in contexts ranging from politics and the environmen...
The German Mujahid
“[A] masterly investigation of evil, resistance and guilt, billed as the first Arab novel to confront the Holocaust” from the Nobel Prize–nominated author (Publishers Weekly). Banned in the author’s native Algeria, this groundbreaking novel is based on a true story and inspired by the work of Primo Levi. The Schiller brothers, Rachel and Malrich, couldn’t be more dissimilar. They were born in a small village in Algeria to a German father and an Algerian mother and raised by an elderly uncle in one of the toughest ghettos in France. But the similarities end there. Rachel is a model immigrant—hard working, upstanding, law-abiding. Malrich has drifted. Increasingly alienated and ang...
Clash of Civilizations over an Elevator at Piazza Vittorio
A small culturally mixed community living an apartment building in the center of Rome is thrown into disarray when one of the neighbors is murdered. An investigation ensues and as each of the victim's neighbors is questioned, the reader is offered an all-access pass into the most colorful neighborhood in contemporary Rome. Each character takes his or her turn center-stage, giving evidence, recounting his or her story, the dramas of emigration, the daily equivocations of immigration, the fears and misunderstandings of a life spent on society's margins, abused by mainstream culture's fears and indifference, preconceptions and insensitivity. What emerges is a touching story that is common to us...
