Reviews

One of my husband’s students read this in English class and gave it to him when he or she was cleaning out their locker. Mr. V read it and then insisted I did, too. It’s a short book, translated from Italian, about an immigrant-full apartment complex in modern-day Rome and a murder that takes place there. Every other chapter is a testimony from one of the residents of the apartment, showing his or her cultural bias and interpretation of the everyday life in the complex. The chapters in-between are the accused murderer’s diary of sorts, giving glimpses of his relationship with each character and the truth. It’s an easy read, and although the ending is sort of clipped and easy, the complexities of the relationships and immigrant biases makes it a worthy read. The book won the prestigious Italian Flaiano Prize.

micaelabrody's review

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4.0

In many ways, Italy is the perfect place for a book like this, with tons of conflicting stories and suspicion. It's a country with a long, long history of infighting; while reading this book I kept coming back to reading about the Renaissance, and thinking about how until more recently than its peers, Italy was a loose collection of city-states rather than a country. (It came up a ton in this book: people from Naples not trusting those from the north or whatever. As someone from a country that in all honesty is like a loose collection of city-states, this felt familiar and gave an interesting angle on the anti-immigrant and xenophobic characters of this book.)

I'm a sucker for a book with a great gimmick like this. We read something in middle school like this that also used a kind of Rashomon device, where each person in an apartment building had something to do with a garden - I don't remember much about the book besides really enjoying it. There's a lot of similarity here in gimmick but there's a reason that book was in middle school. Clash of Civilizations is more grown up, more biting, more satirical, funnier, more political.

One of the best things about this book is actually its length, because of how funny this book can be. I feel like in another author's hands this could have become a tome really examining the human condition. Lakhous tells exactly the story he wants to. It's short enough that the humor stays sharp and fresh, which is what makes this such a fun read. As it turns out, he proves that telling an Important National Story of a changing society on a scale of a single apartment building can be an often laugh-out-loud experience.

gracer's review

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4.0

Great, lively writing with quirky and realistic characters. I throughly enjoyed this book. Interesting "layout", as each chapter is a different character's point of view as they talk about their relationship with Amedeo, paired with a chapter in the form of Amedeo's personal tape recordings.

The story captures the intensity of intercultural living and issues of racism and stereotyping, particularly in the way these things exist in Italy. In turn it also is a look into different types of immigrants and life stories, different bits of culture, and the roots of cultural misunderstandings.

The mystery-plot of it was a little less to my liking, as if the author wanted to tell the story but didn't have a plot in mind, so he made it into a mystery so there would be an ending/conclusion. I thought that was somewhat unnecessary, but it's a small criticism as the experience of reading the book was a very pleasant one.

dorritx's review against another edition

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1.0

This is objectively bad.

roosmarleen's review against another edition

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3.0

3.5 stars

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