Amara Lakhous
Scontro di civiltà per un ascensore a Piazza Vittorio

LA RECENSIONE

Stop the film.

Rewind the tape.

I ask you to go back.

Do you remember Piazza Vittorio in that scene from Bicycle Thieves?

You were greeted by a confused and incessant chatter. Merchants, street vendors, and dealers, artisans and smugglers. "All honest people," someone said.

There, in Piazza Vittorio, Antonio was trying to find his bicycle, which had been stolen from him shortly before and now, probably, is counterfeited. The noise of the square was contrasted by the silence of Bruno, taciturn and worried.

Each one of them, the chattering Romans of Piazza Vittorio, got up in the morning and began to hustle to make it through the day.

If you want to know what this corner of Rome has become now, reading this novel by Amara Lakhous might be the right choice.

In this novel, at the dawn of the new and our millennium, Rome has changed and Piazza Vittorio has become the stage for a melting pot of dialects, cultures, and ethnicities.

A bit like the beginning of those jokes we used to tell as kids. The ones where "There was a Milanese, a Roman, and a Neapolitan..." And we, in Sardinia, added the Sardinian... And so, it was done respectively in every part of Italy. Well, here they are all present, and then there’s also a Bangladeshi, an Iranian, and... Mr. Amedeo, who comes "from the south." All of them are actors in a Clash of Civilizations for an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio.

Everyone has a voice in this detective novel by Amara Lakhous: they are indeed narrative witnesses in a process conducted by a hidden prosecutor. The aim is to discover who killed Lorenzo Manfredini "the Gladiator" inside the cabin of an elevator, in Piazza Vittorio in Rome.

The main suspect is indeed Amedeo, who "comes from the south," and who, conveniently, disappeared from the building right after the crime.

We hear his voice, but his character. Everyone esteems him, yet no one knows him, no one knows anything about his past.

In short, we don't know where he is, we don't know where he comes from.

Does Mr. Amedeo really exist?

We hear the many testimonies of all the people informed about the facts: they are revealed to be reliable and unreliable, realistic and fanciful, dazzled by the worldview of each of the condo's inhabitants. Facts are told, but stories are imagined, people are described, yet origins, languages, and traditions are confused.

The search for truth thus becomes an opportunity to describe the prejudices and beliefs of these new Romans, immersed, without the proper tools, in the activity of coexistence with the other.

Rating: 7/10