Corriere della Sera (Italy): "This blessed Algerian author has managed to throw a revolutionary commonplace up in our faces. In the absence of words, in the absence of awareness, distrust, desperation, and violence are born in their place."

The Power of Words: Immigration, Racism and Awareness
by Paolo Fallai
Il Corriere della Sera
07 May 2006

Wow! This blessed Algerian author has managed to throw a revolutionary commonplace up in our faces. In the absence of words, in the absence of awareness, distrust, desperation, and violence are born in their place. Where there are no words, illegality flourishes. This is no mere immigration novel from the pen of an immigrant! Amara Lakhous writes of us. And he does so with such authority that he describes his Italian characters almost better he does the foreign ones, though perhaps at times exaggerating when he crosses into the tricky terrain of dialect. But, in short, he can afford a little exaggeration… Clash of Civilizations Over and Elevator in Piazza Vittorio has already become a minor publishing sensation.