— Anonymous
I felt that the novel “Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio” by Amara Lakhous really targets one of societies known cultural problem. When reading the novel there were no parts where it is hard for me to understand, which in this sense made it much easier for the me to connect to the text. I am not an immigrant; however, I did study in India for four years and came back to the U.S to continue my education and faced many of the problems similar to the characters in the novel. In the novel language was one of the main problems within the characters. I can relate to this part of the novel because coming from India many words were pronounced differently and some words were foreign to me. It was quite difficult to communicate with people because they wouldn’t really understand what I was trying to say. Amara does a great job of using satire to hint at these real-life issues while trying to keep the reader engaged with the main point, which was finding who killed the gladiator. Bringing these issues to the reader’s attention in a funny context is a great way to spark curiosity. For me at least after reading the book those funny text remained in with me because it stood out and since the text was about a pressing issue, the issue also reoccurred every time I thought of the funny text. Thus I feel that the Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio should be considered a great work.
