LA Times on some of our recent titles

In an apartment building of immigrants, one resident is convinced the others don't like him because he hates pizza. You might think New York, but it's Rome, and when an inconvenient corpse shows up, the various "truths" these people tell are more "Rashomon" than "Law & Order." Part social satire and part murder mystery, Amara Lakhous' "Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio" is out in October from Europa Editions, an independent press based in Italy and New York. Europa, which focuses on works in translation, publishes books that range from the uplifting to the dark. One of its bestsellers (in Germany, Spain, Italy and France) is Muriel Barbery's "The Elegance of the Hedgehog," out here in September. The book explores the secrets of a well-to-do adolescent girl and the concierge in her French apartment building. Will American readers get past the obnoxious wealthy Marxist on the first page? Works in translation bring a thrill because they force a new point of view. People drop out of French society -- as in Jean-Claude Izzo's "A Sun for the Dying" -- in ways other than they do in the United States. These books are a reminder that different societies function . . . differently. But the people within them -- the societies and their literature -- are the connective force. Take the women in Elena Ferrante's intense books, under so much psychological pressure that they slide into extreme behaviors. They're recognizable, even if Ferrante isn't; she's Italy's J.D. Salinger, so reclusive that she publishes under a pseudonym.

from LA Times