Scontro di civiltà per
un ascensore a piazza Vittorio*
Amara Lakhous
Editions e/o • 2006 • 189
p.
Simona Mammano
Translation: Karen Vincent-Jones
Amara Lakhous,
born in Algeria in 1970, has a degree in Philosphy from the University
of Algiers ; he took a degree in Cultural Anthropology at La
Sapienza University in Rome where he has lived since 1995. He
is a professional journalist who works for the Adnkronos International
press agency. In 2003 he published, in Arabic, How
To Be Suckled by a She-wolf Without Getting Bitten (Al-ikhtilaf Editions, Algiers) which has
been translated into Italian as Scontro
de civiltà per un
ascensore a Piazza Vittorio (Culture Shock in an Elevator,
Piazza Vittorio).
In
order to solve a murder case, a good investigator knows that there
is one vital prerequisite: keeping an open mind, free of prejudice
and not settling on one unique solution without retaining the ability
and the intelligence to weigh up other possibilities. This does not
mean leading an investigation riddled with doubts and uncertainties,
but knowing that the roads that lead to the truth may be the most
unlikely ones.
Lakhous's novel centres around
the murder of one of the tenants of an appartment building in the
Piazza Vittorio, in Rome , inhabited by foreigners and Italians from
many different areas. The place where the man is murdered is symbolic:
the appartment block's elevator, a constant bone of contention between
the building's tenants and the porter. The suspect is one of the
building's inhabitants. This is a multistranded novel where characters
of various nationalities who are all narrators give their own explanations
of the crime according to their own world views and their culturally-shaped
interpretations of events.
In giving each chapter the
title ‘The
truth according to…' followed by the name of each of the characters,
the author is showing that if you want to understand the whole
truth you have to ignore the rules.
* Culture Shock in an Elevator,
Piazza Vittorio
