Download or read book Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio written by Amara Lakhous and published by Europa Editions. This book was released on 2008-09-30 with total page 107 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio written by Amara Lakhous and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the body of a tenant is discovered in the elevator of an apartment building in Rome, the police gather widely different accounts of what may have led to the crime from each of the other tenants.
Download or read book Dispute Over a Very Italian Piglet written by Amara Lakhous and published by Europa Editions. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book Divorce Islamic Style written by Amara Lakhous and published by Europa Editions UK. This book was released on 2012-09-10 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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. Chirsitan 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.
Download or read book The Prank of the Good Little Virgin of Via Ormea written by Amara Lakhous and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Vita written by Melania G. Mazzucco and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2005-09-15 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In April 1903, the steamship Republic spills more than two thousand immigrants onto Ellis Island. Among them are Diamante, age twelve, and Vita, nine, sent by their poor families in southern Italy to make their way in America. Amid the chaos and splendor of New York, the misery and criminality of Little Italy, and the shady tenants of Vita's father's decrepit Prince Street boarding house, Diamante and Vita struggle to survive, to create a new life, and to become American. From journeys west in search of work to journeys back to Italy in search of their roots, to Vita's son's encounter with his mother's home town while serving as an army captain in World War II, Vita touches on every aspect of the heartbreaking and inspiring immigrant story. The award-winning Italian author Melania G. Mazzucco weaves her own family history into a great American novel of the immigrant experience. A sweeping tale of discovery, love, and loss, Vita is a passionate blend of biography and autobiography, of fantasy and fiction.
Download or read book Adua written by Igiaba Scego and published by New Vessel Press. This book was released on 2017-05-22 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “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 review) “Igiaba Scego is an original voice who connects Italy’s present with its colonial past. Adua is an important novel that obliges the country to confront both memory and truth.” —Amara Lakhous, author of Dispute over a Very Italian Piglet “This book depicts the soul and the body of a daughter and a father, illuminating words that are used every day and swiftly emptied of meaning: migrants, diaspora, refugees, separation, hope, humiliation, death.” —Panorama “A memorable, affecting tale . . . Brings the decolonialization of Africa to life . . . All the more affecting for being told without sentimentality or self-pity.” —ForeWord Reviews “Deeply and thoroughly researched . . . Also a captivating read: the novel is sweeping in its geographical and temporal scope, yet Scego nonetheless renders her complex protagonists richly and lovingly.” —Africa Is a Country
Download or read book She Wolf written by Cristina Mazzoni and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-29 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since antiquity, the she-wolf has served as the potent symbol of Rome. For more than two thousand years, the legendary animal that rescued Romulus and Remus has been the subject of historical and political accounts, literary treatments in poetry and prose, and visual representations in every medium. In She-Wolf: The Story of a Roman Icon, Cristina Mazzoni examines the evolution of the she-wolf as a symbol in western history, art, and literature, from antiquity to contemporary times. Used, for example, as an icon of Roman imperial power, papal authority, and the distance between the present and the past, the she-wolf has also served as an allegory for greed, good politics, excessive female sexuality, and, most recently, modern, multi-cultural Rome. Mazzoni engagingly analyzes the various role guises of the she-wolf over time in the first comprehensive study in any language on this subject.
Download or read book The Royal Physician s Visit written by Per Olov Enquist and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2001-10-29 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A handsome doctor stirs up scandal in the eighteenth-century Danish royal court in this “extraordinarily elegant and gorgeous novel” (Los Angeles Times). The Royal Physician's Visit magnificently recasts the dramatic era of Danish history when Johann Friedrich Struensee—court physician to mad young King Christian—stepped through an aperture in history and became the holder of absolute power in Denmark. His is a gripping tale of power, sex, love, and the life of the mind, and it is superbly rendered here by Sweden’s most acclaimed writer. A charismatic German doctor and brilliant intellectual, Struensee used his influence to introduce hundreds of reforms in Denmark in the 1760s and had a tender and erotic affair with Queen Caroline Mathilde, who was unsatisfied by her unstable, childlike husband. And yet, his ambitions ultimately led to tragedy. This novel, perfect for book clubs, is a compelling look into the intrigues of an Enlightenment court and the life of a singular man. “An enthralling fable of the temptations of power—and a surprisingly poignant love story,” —Time “Realized with a vividness and subtlety that place the book in the front ranks of contemporary literary fiction,” —The New York Times Book Review “The Swedish novelist’s method is to begin 10 years after Struensee’s fall, then retrace the “Struensee era,” as it came to be called, by probing the characters of four principal players—Christian, Guldberg, Struensee, and Queen Caroline Mathilde—each of whose perspectives, even the king’s, he makes intelligible and occasionally even sympathetic. A towering achievement,” —Booklist
Download or read book The German Mujahid written by Boualem Sansal and published by Europa Editions. This book was released on 2009-09-29 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[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 angry, a bleak future seems inevitable for him. But when Islamic fundamentalists murder the young men’s parents in Algeria the destinies of both brothers are transformed. Rachel discovers the shocking truth about his family and buckles under the weight of the sins of his father, a former SS officer. Now Malrich, the outcast, will have to face that same awful truth alone. “The German Mujahid deals with the fine line between the destructive power wielded by Islamic fundamentalism today and the power of another movement that left an indelible mark on history: Nazism.” —Haaretz (Israel) “With extraordinary eloquence, Sansal condemns both the [Algerian] military and the Islamic fundamentalists; he decries that Algeria crippled by trafficking, religion, bureaucracy, the culture of illegality, of coups, and of clans, career apologists, the glorification of tyrants, the love of flashy materialism, and the passion for rants.” —Lire (France) “The German Mujahid, winner of the RTL-Lire Prize for fiction, is a marvelous, devilishly well-constructed novel.” —L’Express (France)
Download or read book Among Women Only written by Cesare Pavese and published by Peter Owen Publishers. This book was released on 2004 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published just months before the author's suicide in 1950, this novel has since become one of Pavese's most sought-after books. In this classic, a successful couturier returns to Turin, the city in which she grew up, at the end of World War II. Opening a salon of her own leads her into a nihilistic circle of young hedonists, including the charismatic Rosetta, whose tragic death forms the novel's climax. But Turin itself is at the heart of the story, its pervading melancholy deftly rendered by a master craftsman.
Download or read book The Iguana written by Anna Maria Ortese and published by Kingston, N.Y. : McPherson. This book was released on 1987 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this magical novel a count from Milan stumbles upon a desolate community of lost noblemen on an uncharted island off the coast of Portugal. When he discovers, to his astonishment, that their ill-treated servant is in fact a maiden iguana, and then proceeds to fall in love with her, the reader is given a fantastic tale of tragic love and delusion that ranks among the most affecting in contemporary literature. "The reptilian servant is only the first in a series of fantastic touches that tansform the narrative into a satiric fable dense with the echoes of Shakespeare's 'Tempest' and Kafka's 'Metamorphosis.' . . . The Iguana is a superb performance.""€"New York Times Book Review
Download or read book Broken Angels written by Richard K. Morgan and published by Del Rey. This book was released on 2004-03-02 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Welcome back to the brash, brutal new world of the twenty-fifth century: where global politics isn’t just for planet Earth anymore; and where death is just a break in the action, thanks to the techno-miracle that can preserve human consciousness and download it into one new body after another. Cynical, quick-on-the-trigger Takeshi Kovacs, the ex-U.N. envoy turned private eye, has changed careers, and bodies, once more . . . trading sleuthing for soldiering as a warrior-for-hire, and helping a far-flung planet’s government put down a bloody revolution. But when it comes to taking sides, the only one Kovacs is ever really on is his own. So when a rogue pilot and a sleazy corporate fat cat offer him a lucrative role in a treacherous treasure hunt, he’s only too happy to go AWOL with a band of resurrected soldiers of fortune. All that stands between them and the ancient alien spacecraft they mean to salvage are a massacred city bathed in deadly radiation, unleashed nanotechnolgy with a million ways to kill, and whatever surprises the highly advanced Martian race may have in store. But armed with his genetically engineered instincts, and his trusty twin Kalashnikovs, Takeshi is ready to take on anything—and let the devil take whoever’s left behind.
Download or read book 2084 written by Boualem Sansal and published by Europa Editions. This book was released on 2017-01-31 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “sharply satirical” novel about an oppressive religious dictatorship and one man’s discovery of an underground resistance (Library Journal). 2015 Winner of the Le Grand Prix du Roman de l’Académie française A tribute to George Orwell’s dystopian classic 1984 and a cry of protest against totalitarianism of all kinds, Boualem Sansal’s 2084 tells the story of a near future in which religious extremists have established a caliphate that forbids autonomous thought. In the year 2084, in the kingdom of Abistan—named after the prophet Abi, earthly messenger of the god Yölah—citizens submit to a single god, demonstrating their devotion by kneeling in prayer nine times a day. Remembering the past is forbidden, and an omnipresent surveillance system instantly informs the authorities of every deviant act, thought, or idea. The kingdom is blessed and its citizens are happy, filled with purpose and piety. Those who are not—the heretics—are put to death by stoning or beheading in city squares. But Ati has met people who think differently: In ghettos and caves, hidden from the authorities, exist the last living heretics and free-thinkers of Abistan. Under their influence, Ati begins to doubt. He begins to think. Now, he will have to defend his thoughts with his life. 2084 is “a rare, powerful book, at the intersection of fable and lampoon, of satire and science fiction,” a cry of freedom, a gripping novel of ideas, and an indictment of the kind of closed-minded fundamentalism that threatens our democracies and the ideals on which they are founded (Lire). “Alison Anderson’s deft and intelligent translation [conveys] Sansal’s abhorrence of a system that controls people’s minds, while explaining that the religion was not originally evil but has been corrupted. A moving and cautionary story.” —The Times Literary Supplement “A powerful novel that celebrates resistance.” —The Guardian
Download or read book Emmaus written by Alessandro Baricco and published by McSweeney's. This book was released on 2012-06-30 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The secular and the pious. The rich and the poor. Those with “a capacity for destiny” and those who “cannot afford it.” Emmaus is a world of stark contrasts, one in which four young men—all from proud, struggling families, and all lusting after Andre, a hyper- sexual woman—are goaded from adolescence to manhood in a torrent of exploits and crises, sexual awakenings and morbid depressions, naivety and fatalism. A brilliant portrait of the perils and uncertainties of youth and faith, Emmaus is a remarkable novel from one of the very best writers in Europe.
Download or read book Hot Maroc written by Yassin Adnan and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-23 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With an infectious blend of humor, satire, and biting social commentary, Yassin Adnan gives readers a portrait of contemporary Morocco—and the city of Marrakech—told through the eyes of the hapless Rahhal Laâouina, a.k.a. the Squirrel. Painfully shy, not that bright, and not all that popular, Rahhal somehow imagines himself a hero. With a useless degree in ancient Arabic poetry, he finds his calling in the online world, where he discovers email, YouTube, Facebook, and the news site Hot Maroc. Enamored of the internet and the thrill of anonymity it allows, Rahhal opens the Atlas Cubs Cyber Café, where patrons mingle virtually with politicians, journalists, hackers, and trolls. However, Rahhal soon finds himself mired in the dark side of the online world—one of corruption, scandal, and deception. Longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2017, Hot Maroc is a vital portrait of the challenges Moroccans, young and old, face today. Where press freedoms are tightly controlled by government authorities, where the police spy on, intimidate, and detain citizens with impunity, and where adherence to traditional cultural icons both anchors and stifles creative production, the online world provides an alternative for the young and voiceless. In this revolutionary novel that recalls Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Dave Eggers’s The Circle, Adnan fixes his lens on young Rahhal and his contemporaries as they navigate the perilous and changing landscape of the real and virtual worlds they inhabit.
Download or read book Migrant Writers and Urban Space in Italy written by Graziella Parati and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-09-15 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about migrants’ lives in urban space, in particular Rome and Milan. At the core of the book is literature as written by migrants, members of a “second generation,” and a filmmaker who defines himself as native. It argues that the narrative authored by migrants, refugees, second generation women, and one “native Italian” perform a reparative reading of Italian spaces in order to engender reparative narratives. Eve Sedgwick wrote about our (now) traditional way of reading based on unveiling and on, mainly, negative affect. We are trained to tear the text apart, dig into it, and uncover the anxieties that define our age. Migrants writers seem to employ both positive and negative affects in defining the past, present, and future of the spaces they inhabit. Their recuperative acts of writing, constitute powerful models of changes in/on place. As they look at Italian exclusionary spaces, they also rewrite them into a present whose transitiveness allows to imagine a process of citizenship and belong constructed from below.
