Hardback: The tension creates a kind of screen between people. In war you can't let your gaze be distracted. Every face, every single face, has to tell you something. You need to decipher it, fix it with your eyes. Silently. You have to know which shop to enter, be certain of every word you utter. Before you decide to go for a walk with someone, you need to know who he is. You have to be more than certain, eliminate every possibility he's a pawn on the chessboard of the conflict.
To stroll next to him and speak to him means to share the field. In war the attention threshold of all the senses is multiplied; it's as if you perceive things more acutely, see into things more deeply, smell things more intensely. Even though all such cunning is for naught when the decision is made to kill. When they strike, they don't worry about whom to save and whom to condemn.
The Camorra war is full of uncertainty. Nothing is defined, nothing is clear. Things become real only when they happen. In the dynamics of power, of absolute power, nothing exists other than what is concrete. And so fleeing, staying, escaping and informing are choices that seem too suspended, too uncertain, and every piece of advice always finds its opposite twin. Only a concrete occurrence can make you decide. But when it happens, all you can do is accept the decision.
In the spring of 2006, what began as a reporter's investigation of Neapolitan organized crime made international news headlines. At great personal risk, the vigilante journalist, Roberto Saviano compiled the most thorough account to date of the Camorra and its chillingly significant role in the global economy. The result, a groundbreaking and utterly compelling book, was a major bestseller in Italy, and Saviano was granted police protection after his life was threatened by the organization, which had hitherto operated in relative obscurity.
Known by insiders as 'the System', the Camorra has an international reach and large stakes in construction, high fashion, illicit drugs and toxic-waste disposal. It exerts a malign grip on cities and villages along the Neapolitan coast and is the deciding factor in why Campania has the highest murder rate in all of Europe and why cancer levels there have skyrocketed in recent years.
Saviano tells of huge cargoes of Chinese goods that are shipped to Naples and then quickly distributed unchecked across Europe. He investigates the Camorra's control of thousands of Chinese factories contracted to manufacture fashion goods, legally and illegally, for distribution around the world, and relates the chilling details of how the abusive handling of toxic waste is causing devastating pollution not only for Naples but also China and Somalia.
In pursuit of his subject, Saviano worked as an assistant at a Chinese textile manufacturer, a waiter at a Camorra wedding and on a construction site. A native of the region, he recalls seeing his first murder at the age of fourteen, and how his own father, a doctor, suffered a brutal beating for trying to aid an eighteen-year-old victim who had been left for dead in the street.
Gomorrah is a bold and engrossing piece of investigative writing and one heroic young man's impassioned story of a place under the rule of a murderous organization. It is translated from the Italian into the English by Virginia Jewiss.
About the author: Roberto Saviano is an Italian writer and journalist. In his writings, articles, television programs, and books he employs prose and news-reporting style to narrate the story of the Camorra (a powerful Neapolitan mafia-like organization), exposing its territory and business connections.
Since 2006, following the publication of his bestselling book Gomorrah (Gomorra in Italian), where he describes the clandestine particulars of the Camorra business, Saviano has been threatened by several Neapolitan "godfathers". The Italian Minister of the Interior has granted him a permanent police escort. Because of his courageous stance, he is considered a "national hero" by author-philosopher Umberto Eco. He lives at a secret location to avoid reprisal attacks.
On 20 October 2008, six Nobel Prize-awarded authors and intellectuals (Orhan Pamuk, Dario Fo, Rita Levi-Montalcini, Desmond Tutu, Günter Grass, and Mikhail Gorbachev) published an article in which they say that they side with Saviano against Camorra, and they think that Camorra is not just a problem of security and public order, but also a democratic one.
On 10 December 2009, in the presence of Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo, Saviano received the title of Honorary Member of the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera and the Second Level Academic Diploma in Communication and Art Teaching Honoris Causa, the highest recognition by the Brera Academy equivalent to a postgraduate degree. Saviano dedicated the awards to the people from the south of Italy living in Milan.
On November 2010 he started hosting, with Fabio Fazio, the Italian television program "Vieni via con me", broadcast by Rai 3.
His second book, ZeroZeroZero, was published by Feltrinelli in 2013. This book is a study of the business around the drug cocaine, covering its movement across continents and the role of drug money in international finance. He was awarded the 2011 PEN/Pinter Prize and the 2011 Olof Palme Prize. (Wikipedia)
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