Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio

Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio is a murder mystery by Amara Lakhous, an Algerian author who writes frequently on the tumultuous melting pot society of the modern Mediterranean. Set in an apartment building in Rome, the mystery begins when an unappealing character named The Gladiator is murdered in the building's elevator. Each of the twelve tenants in the building gives testimony about the suspicious happenings leading up to the murder, many of which contradict each other and only contribute to the chaos surrounding the case. As each character gives testimony, the reader and the lead detectives learn about the perils of immigration, bias, and identity in modern day Rome.

The story begins in a neighborhood near the Piazza Vittorio, an area known for housing a number of immigrants from all corners of the globe. The neighbors live in relative (if noisy) harmony until one of the tenants, a man named The Gladiator, is murdered and left in the elevator. When he is discovered, it is not a strong detective protagonist who takes the lead, but the voices of the many neighbors, all of whom are bigoted or biased against another group and all of whom have strong opinions about who killed the Gladiator, and why.

The Gladiator was an unpopular figure in the building – he was brutish and cruel, and many neighbors knew that he regularly sexually assaulted the Peruvian maid who lived next door to him. She doesn’t have proper documentation and so was too frightened to report the assaults to the police. The Gladiator was also generally disrespectful of the building and was often caught peeing in the elevator.



One by one, the neighbors give their testimony to the police. One, a Milanese professor, talks to police about the Gladiator's frequent urination in the elevator as proof of the decline of civilization as we know it. The concierge, Benadetta, is a full-blooded Italian who despises the immigrants she sees around her because she thinks they are taking jobs away from her, according to her, much more capable son. She shouts insults in Italian at one of the tenants, a man whom she thinks is a drunken, angry Albanian, but who is, in fact, Parviz from Iran. He is afraid that his time spent in Italy will ruin the memory he has of his homeland, to which he desperately wants to return. Other characters include a grieving older woman who believes that the Chinese restaurateurs nearby have stolen her beloved dog.

Ultimately, though all the characters have strong biases against each other, they do agree that the primary suspect in the case, Amedeo, an Italian man definitely did not kill the Gladiator. All of the neighbors love Amedeo. A gentleman at heart, he organizes regular groups to help older Muslim women get out of their apartments to meet each other and build community. He once saved the Peruvian maid from an attack by the Gladiator, and he befriended the concierge, Benadetta, by deciding to always take the stairs. He gave Parviz, the homesick Iranian immigrant, a way to connect with his homeland despite the fact that it was unsafe for him to return, allowing him to feel more content in his new life in Italy. Unfortunately, though, all signs point toward Amedeo when it comes to the murder. The last person seen with the Gladiator, he was heard saying, “I'll kill you.” Moreover, since the murder, nobody has seen Amedeo – he seemed to disappear into thin air.

With every character disagreeing unless it is on the subject of who did not commit murder, both police and reader are at a loss. However, not all the characters are truly who they say, or think, they are, and the chaos only intensifies as the police dig deeper into the true nature of each of the remaining twelve tenants in the Piazzo.



Amara Lakhous is an Algerian author, who was born in Algiers in 1970. He was educated in Algiers and in Rome, where he got a PhD in cultural anthropology from the University la Sapienza. He has written a number of novels: Bedbugs and the Pirate (1999), Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio (2006), Divorce Islamic Style (2010), Dispute Over a Very Italian Piglet (2013), and The Prank of the Good Little Virgin (2014). He has also written a scholarly thesis on the subject of living in the world as a Muslim minority. Lakhous was forced to flee Algiers after his work as a journalist on the radio caused Islamist groups to threaten his life. In 2006, he received the prestigious Italian Flaiano prize and the Racalmere-Leonardo Sciascia prize for Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio.