Immaginario, migrazione e politica nella scrittura di Amara Lakhous: Kayfa tarda‘u min al-dhi’ba duna an ta‘addaka e la sua autotraduzione Conflitto di civiltà per un ascensore a Piazza Vittorio

Abstract

Clash of civilizations over an elevator in Piazza Vittorio by Amara Lakhous - winner of the prestigious Flaiano and Racalmare Leonardo Sciascia awards - has been the object of great attention by scholars of Italian Literature, Comparative Literatures and Migration Studies who have based their analyses, except for a few works, on the Italian self-translation of the novel (2006) and subsequent translations from the Italian text. However, most of these studies overlook the fact that the novel was originally written in Arabic and published in Algeria in 2003. This article examines both the Arabic and the Italian versions of Clash of civilizations over an elevator in Piazza Vittorio with reference to the different horizons of expectation of the readers of the two texts. This approach allows to understand a distinctive feature of Lakhous’ work that has been neglected by previous studies: the way the novel interacts with two different social imaginaries and operates to transform them.