Items related to Gomorrah: Italy's Other Mafia
Roberto Saviano's groundbreaking and utterly compelling book is a major international bestseller, and has to date sold over 1 million copies in Italy alone, where it continues to sell strongly two years after original publication. Since publishing his searing expose of their criminal activities, the author has received so many death threats from the Camorra that he has been assigned police protection. Known by insiders as 'the System', the Camorra, an organized crime network with a global reach and large stakes in construction, high fashion, illicit drugs and toxic-waste disposal, exerts a malign grip on cities and villages along the Neapolitan coast 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.
In pursuit of his subject, Saviano worked as an assistant at a Chinese textile manufacturer and on a construction site, both controlled by 'the System', and as a waiter at a Camorra wedding. Born in Naples, 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 help an eighteen-year-old victim, left for dead in the street.
Gomorrah is both 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.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review:
'...strength of Gomorrah lies in the angry passion with which he denounces the grip of organised crime.'
-- Financial Times
'An extraordinarily powerful book. With its pages of gritty reportage and low-life legwork, Gomorrah recreates a truly evil sense of menace. The book has been a huge bestseller in Italy. Saviano, however, has incurred the wrath of the Camorra for naming names, and is now under police protection. Naples, one-time Arcady of Bourbon kings and queens, emerges here as disaffected, dying. If you love this city, as I do, Gomorrah will fill you with dismay' -- Ian Thomson, London Evening Standard, 21 Jan 2008
'One of the most enthralling and disturbing books written on organised crime ... the great value of Gomorrah is to highlight two points: the power and wealth that southern Italy's Mafias have accumulated in recent years, and the fact that their globalisation makes them an issue of concern for us all. His description of the effects of gang war on ordinary people ("Women stop wearing high heels--too hard to run in them") is masterly. His final chapter, set in the apocalyptic wilderness of the Camorra's smouldering waste dumps, is inspired -- and prescient, as the garbage crisis in Naples unfolds' -- The Economist, 10 Jan 2008
'Part economic analysis, part social history, part cri de coeur, this crushing testimonial is the most important book to come out of Italy'
-- New York Times
'Read this important book, and you will appreciate why Italy is still a country that needs heroes like him' -- Guardian Review
'Roberto Saviano's horrifying book paints organised crime as it really is. Forget Vito Corleone; forget Ray Liotta in Goodfellas. The ruthless Camorra gangs that control modernday Naples exert a malign influence on every area of the Italian economy, from fashion to drug-dealing, from sanitation to refuse collection and from construction to hospitality ... as an insight into a terrifying world by a remarkable investigative journalist, it is riveting' Mail on Sunday -- Mail on Sunday, 20 Jan 2008
`A brave expose of the gangland hell that is tearing Naples apart. A powerful work of reportage, Gomorrah became a literary sensation when it appeared in Italy last year. It started a national conversation, but also won its 28-year old first time author uglier accolades: death threats and a constant police escort - he now lives in hiding. The stakes are high. Part economic analysis, part social history, part cri de coeur, this crushing testimonial is the most important book to come out of Italy in years. Like Conrad's London, Saviano's Naples is one of the world's dark places. He tugged a loose thread in the fabric of Italian bourgeois respectability and pulling until nothing was left. I could not get this brave book out of my head. After reading Gomorrah, it becomes impossible to see Italy, and the global market, in the same way again' -- William Grimes, The Scotsman, 13 Jan 2008
`Every so often, when reading Saviano's book you have to pause, and remember he is writing not about some war-torn African territory or former communist state, but about life in a big city in a rich nation in western Europe; a founder-member of the European Union; a favourite destination for low-cost flyers, and a country whose affairs are increasingly - and, Saviano suggests, dangerously - bound up with ours.'
-- John Hooper, Guardian G2 Profile, 14 Jan 2008
`This brave account of the most organised of all Italy's crime fraternities demands respect. Saviano's devastating account of his homeland is highly emotional: unlike many, perhaps older and wearier, Italian journalists, he still feels personally outraged by what he sees. His descriptions of the lawless violent world of Naples are both gritty and sentimental, a poetry of cruelty. Perhaps unsurprisingly, since the book came out, he has been threatened by the clans and now has a police escort for his own safety' -- Clare Longrigg, Sunday Telegraph, 13 Jan 2008
`a superb piece of investigative reporting ... Saviano is without question a winning young man with real potential as a writer' -- Misha Glenny, Sunday Times, 13 Jan 2008
Book Description:
-- Financial Times
'An extraordinarily powerful book. With its pages of gritty reportage and low-life legwork, Gomorrah recreates a truly evil sense of menace. The book has been a huge bestseller in Italy. Saviano, however, has incurred the wrath of the Camorra for naming names, and is now under police protection. Naples, one-time Arcady of Bourbon kings and queens, emerges here as disaffected, dying. If you love this city, as I do, Gomorrah will fill you with dismay' -- Ian Thomson, London Evening Standard, 21 Jan 2008
'One of the most enthralling and disturbing books written on organised crime ... the great value of Gomorrah is to highlight two points: the power and wealth that southern Italy's Mafias have accumulated in recent years, and the fact that their globalisation makes them an issue of concern for us all. His description of the effects of gang war on ordinary people ("Women stop wearing high heels--too hard to run in them") is masterly. His final chapter, set in the apocalyptic wilderness of the Camorra's smouldering waste dumps, is inspired -- and prescient, as the garbage crisis in Naples unfolds' -- The Economist, 10 Jan 2008
'Part economic analysis, part social history, part cri de coeur, this crushing testimonial is the most important book to come out of Italy'
-- New York Times
'Read this important book, and you will appreciate why Italy is still a country that needs heroes like him' -- Guardian Review
'Roberto Saviano's horrifying book paints organised crime as it really is. Forget Vito Corleone; forget Ray Liotta in Goodfellas. The ruthless Camorra gangs that control modernday Naples exert a malign influence on every area of the Italian economy, from fashion to drug-dealing, from sanitation to refuse collection and from construction to hospitality ... as an insight into a terrifying world by a remarkable investigative journalist, it is riveting' Mail on Sunday -- Mail on Sunday, 20 Jan 2008
`A brave expose of the gangland hell that is tearing Naples apart. A powerful work of reportage, Gomorrah became a literary sensation when it appeared in Italy last year. It started a national conversation, but also won its 28-year old first time author uglier accolades: death threats and a constant police escort - he now lives in hiding. The stakes are high. Part economic analysis, part social history, part cri de coeur, this crushing testimonial is the most important book to come out of Italy in years. Like Conrad's London, Saviano's Naples is one of the world's dark places. He tugged a loose thread in the fabric of Italian bourgeois respectability and pulling until nothing was left. I could not get this brave book out of my head. After reading Gomorrah, it becomes impossible to see Italy, and the global market, in the same way again' -- William Grimes, The Scotsman, 13 Jan 2008
`Every so often, when reading Saviano's book you have to pause, and remember he is writing not about some war-torn African territory or former communist state, but about life in a big city in a rich nation in western Europe; a founder-member of the European Union; a favourite destination for low-cost flyers, and a country whose affairs are increasingly - and, Saviano suggests, dangerously - bound up with ours.'
-- John Hooper, Guardian G2 Profile, 14 Jan 2008
`This brave account of the most organised of all Italy's crime fraternities demands respect. Saviano's devastating account of his homeland is highly emotional: unlike many, perhaps older and wearier, Italian journalists, he still feels personally outraged by what he sees. His descriptions of the lawless violent world of Naples are both gritty and sentimental, a poetry of cruelty. Perhaps unsurprisingly, since the book came out, he has been threatened by the clans and now has a police escort for his own safety' -- Clare Longrigg, Sunday Telegraph, 13 Jan 2008
`a superb piece of investigative reporting ... Saviano is without question a winning young man with real potential as a writer' -- Misha Glenny, Sunday Times, 13 Jan 2008
A dangerous, politically explosive international literary sensation
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- PublisherMacmillan
- Publication date2008
- ISBN 10 0230017762
- ISBN 13 9780230017764
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages320
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