Status
Available
Call number
Publication
DEBOLSILLO (2008), Edición: 001, 328 páginas
Description
A major bestseller in Italy, this is a heroic young man's impassioned account of the decline of Naples under the rule of the Camorra, an organized crime network with a large international reach and stakes in construction, high fashion, illicit drugs, and toxic-waste disposal. Known by insiders as "the System," the Camorra affects cities and villages along the Neapolitan coast, and is the deciding factor in why Campania, for instance, has the highest murder rate in all of Europe and why cancer levels there have skyrocketed in recent years. Author Saviano, who saw his first murder at age 14, worked under cover to investigate the Camorra's control of Chinese factories contracted to manufacture fashion goods, legally and illegally, for distribution around the world, and relates how the abusive handling of toxic waste is causing devastating pollution not only for Naples but also China and Somalia.--From publisher description.… (more)
Media reviews
User reviews
LibraryThing member lriley
Thanks to LT for sending an early reviewers copy of this book.
The Camorra is the subject of Roberto Saviano's Gomorrah. These are the loosely connected Italian clans that make up the organized criminal associations centered around the Naples region in Italy--the tentacles of which reach all over
One of my quibbles with this book though is that it assumes a bit much at least of readers outside Italy. It jumps around a bit. It's almost as if he takes for granted that the reader has some kind of personal knowledge about this group from his own experience. It may be that Saviano never expected it to go very far beyond Italy's borders. There is a disjointedness about it especially it seemed in the first half or so. In contstruct his writing seems to mostly cross between journalistic and ruminative/meditative with some fictional touches. The second half of the book is better. I especially liked the examples of those who have fought with integritly against this group. To his credit Saviano seems to be one of that number as apparently he is under threat. No doubt they do not like the less than glorifying portrait he paints of them individually and/or as a group of more or less mindless robotic killers.
All in all it's an interesting read. The Camorra has never gotten the attention here that the Sicilian orientated Mafia has. Saviano's book brings us much closer to understanding the greed and ambition and bloodlust behind an equal if not more powerful criminal organization and the avenues it uses--illegal and otherwise to mestastisize like the cancer it is.
The Camorra is the subject of Roberto Saviano's Gomorrah. These are the loosely connected Italian clans that make up the organized criminal associations centered around the Naples region in Italy--the tentacles of which reach all over
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the globe in both legal and non-legal ways. The constant war for primacy amongst these clans, the subversion of the law and of the culture of the people that live in the middle of this area. For a clan member the almost constant killing for money and for power no matter the personal injury to oneself or to ones freedom to move about without fear--to breathe freely without fear that you might be next. To kill remorselessly--with cruelty and without pity. One man is taken down to a shore to watch the sea come in--strapped to a chair--his mouth is stuffed with sand and gradually forms into a kind of cement that suffocates him. It's all about power and money. And it's all business. It's almost as if they've modeled themselves on the corporate/multi-national worlds or maybe even it's the other way around--the corporations have modeled themselves on them. It's hard to tell and anyway as Saviano's book makes clear often enough the corporate world and this criminal world work very very well together. For a large enough investment or donation we'll cover up your mess.One of my quibbles with this book though is that it assumes a bit much at least of readers outside Italy. It jumps around a bit. It's almost as if he takes for granted that the reader has some kind of personal knowledge about this group from his own experience. It may be that Saviano never expected it to go very far beyond Italy's borders. There is a disjointedness about it especially it seemed in the first half or so. In contstruct his writing seems to mostly cross between journalistic and ruminative/meditative with some fictional touches. The second half of the book is better. I especially liked the examples of those who have fought with integritly against this group. To his credit Saviano seems to be one of that number as apparently he is under threat. No doubt they do not like the less than glorifying portrait he paints of them individually and/or as a group of more or less mindless robotic killers.
All in all it's an interesting read. The Camorra has never gotten the attention here that the Sicilian orientated Mafia has. Saviano's book brings us much closer to understanding the greed and ambition and bloodlust behind an equal if not more powerful criminal organization and the avenues it uses--illegal and otherwise to mestastisize like the cancer it is.
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LibraryThing member PaulBerauer
This book is a fascinating look into the crime world of Naples, a world that makes the American mafioso look like a bunch of kids selling lemonade. The book is not organized as an expose per say, but rather as a memoir of someone who once lived in the area and experienced the violence first hand.
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It meanders through different stories and different time periods, giving vivid details and examples of the sheer power and violence of the Naples crime syndicate. A fascinating look into the Italian mafia and how it continues to thrive and grow in the new century. Show Less
LibraryThing member chuck_ralston
Gomorrah is Roberto Saviano’s nel mezzo del cammin de nostra vita into the bowels of the Neapolitan criminal System familiarly known as the Camorra and often contrasted with the Sicilian Mafia. The headquarters of the System is Naples and its environs, with international, ‘global’ enterprise
‘The Port’ (Chapter 1) opens with the scene of a docking crane off-loading a ship’s container that accidently spills its contents of frozen human bodies, which “looked like mannequins [. . .] men, women, even a few children [. . .] frozen, stacked one on top of another, packed like sardines.” Chinese workers who had paid a percentage of their wages to be returned post mortem to be buried in their homeland. “Everything that exists [Saviano as narrator says] passes through [. . .] the port of Naples.” The dynamics of markets, capital, and consumer goods on a global scale coupled with greed and treachery drive the risk takers to bypass taxes and tariffs “the deadwood of profit” for more money, merchandise, and ultimate mercantile power.
“Angelina Jolie” (Chapter 2) is a portrait of a Neapolitan sweat shop where illicit ‘designer-labeled’ knock-off garments are assembled by low-paid yet skilled workers. Pasquale, adept worker with fabrics, also teaches his competitors in China by applying his craft in front of a camera (“take great are with the seams [which have] to be light but not nonexistent”) which images and simultaneous translation into Chinese are transmitted to China’s own sweat shops. Pasquale, with the face of an old man “constantly buried in fabric” knew also the ins and outs of clothing design of pants, jackets, dresses, even the exact number of washings a fabric could undergo before sagging. One evening while surfing TV channels, Pasquale froze at the image of actress Jolie at the Oscars dressed in a gorgeous white suit. He still remembered the measurements, the form of its neckline. Pasquale had made the garment to be shipped to America, as his suppliers had told him, but he was stunned and could say nothing, a “satisfaction that went uncelebrated.” Pasquale left the garment industry to drive trucks for one of the Camorra ‘families’. For our narrator Pasquale’s anonymous experience in the new global economics “seems an amended chapter of Marx’s Capital, a paragraph added to Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, a new sentence in John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, a note in Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.”
After two long reportorial chapters on the activities of The System so-called and the decades-long Secondigliano War which since 1979 has resulted in some 3,600 murdered victims of the Camorra: “more than the Sicilian Mafia, more than the ‘Ndrangheta, more that the Russian Mafia, more than the Albanian families, more than the total number of deaths by the ETA in Spain and the IRA in Ireland [. . . .], is the fifth chapter ‘Women’ devoted to those female leaders, usually widows of murdered dons who have assumed the mantle of leadership among the Camorrista in recent years, to include one Anna Mazza, brain behind the Moccia clan for two decades, or Immacolata Capone, or Erminia Giulano. “Women [our narrator tells us] are better able to confront crime as if it were only momentary, or someone’s opinion, or a step one takes before quickly moving on. Clan women demonstrate this very clearly. They feel offended and vilified when they are called Camorristi or criminals, as if ‘criminal’ were merely a judgment of an action, not an objective way of behaving. In fact, contrary to the men, so far not one female Camorra boss has ever repented. Not one.” (p. 150)
It is in this chapter devoted to the women of the System that Saviano’s Gomorrah reaches its profound center with its beatific vision of the fourteen-year old Annalisa Durante (the original given name of Dante), killed in a cross fire shootout between warring Secondigliano factions. Annalisa is guilty only of having been born in Naples and with ambition to be with her friends listening to music and to someday marry and raise a family. Amidst grieving families, a church filled to capacity for her funeral mass, police and carabinieri, reporters and film crews, Annalisa’s white casket is carried from the church to its final resting place. En route a classmate “calls her cell phone and the ringing from the coffin “is the new requiem. Musical tones, a sweet melody, No one answers.” (p. 156) In the terraced Purgatorio, Dante, at the summit meets for the first time Beatrice, whom he loved once when both were children on earth. No longer with his guide Virgil, who as a non-Christian must remain in Limbo, it will be Beatrice who leads Dante toward his vision of Paradise.
Part Two of Gomorrah comprises six chapters each of which exhibits an aspect of the criminal System: the technology of war, ‘Kalashnikov’; the construction industry, ‘Concrete’; imagery in popular culture, ‘Hollywood’; the parish priest as hero and martyr, (and where the reader first finds the Camorra and Naples compared to the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:24-29, KJV)), ‘Don Peppino Diana’; international expansion, ‘Aberdeen, Mondragone’; and the corrupt economy of waste management, ‘Land of Fires’. Where Part One of Saviano’s novel is a descent into the underworld of crime in Naples and the System or Camorra, Part Two describes attempted purgation of the manifold underpinnings of crime in the activities of the people who are called upon to build a new conscience of ethical solidarity in their daily lives. In the end, Saviano as narrator ponders if it is even possible to withstand the power of the System.
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links to other European and Asian cities with especial interest in the fashion industry, but with continuing control of illicit drug trafficking, extortion, and racketeering in Naples and throughout Europe. ‘The Port’ (Chapter 1) opens with the scene of a docking crane off-loading a ship’s container that accidently spills its contents of frozen human bodies, which “looked like mannequins [. . .] men, women, even a few children [. . .] frozen, stacked one on top of another, packed like sardines.” Chinese workers who had paid a percentage of their wages to be returned post mortem to be buried in their homeland. “Everything that exists [Saviano as narrator says] passes through [. . .] the port of Naples.” The dynamics of markets, capital, and consumer goods on a global scale coupled with greed and treachery drive the risk takers to bypass taxes and tariffs “the deadwood of profit” for more money, merchandise, and ultimate mercantile power.
“Angelina Jolie” (Chapter 2) is a portrait of a Neapolitan sweat shop where illicit ‘designer-labeled’ knock-off garments are assembled by low-paid yet skilled workers. Pasquale, adept worker with fabrics, also teaches his competitors in China by applying his craft in front of a camera (“take great are with the seams [which have] to be light but not nonexistent”) which images and simultaneous translation into Chinese are transmitted to China’s own sweat shops. Pasquale, with the face of an old man “constantly buried in fabric” knew also the ins and outs of clothing design of pants, jackets, dresses, even the exact number of washings a fabric could undergo before sagging. One evening while surfing TV channels, Pasquale froze at the image of actress Jolie at the Oscars dressed in a gorgeous white suit. He still remembered the measurements, the form of its neckline. Pasquale had made the garment to be shipped to America, as his suppliers had told him, but he was stunned and could say nothing, a “satisfaction that went uncelebrated.” Pasquale left the garment industry to drive trucks for one of the Camorra ‘families’. For our narrator Pasquale’s anonymous experience in the new global economics “seems an amended chapter of Marx’s Capital, a paragraph added to Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, a new sentence in John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, a note in Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.”
After two long reportorial chapters on the activities of The System so-called and the decades-long Secondigliano War which since 1979 has resulted in some 3,600 murdered victims of the Camorra: “more than the Sicilian Mafia, more than the ‘Ndrangheta, more that the Russian Mafia, more than the Albanian families, more than the total number of deaths by the ETA in Spain and the IRA in Ireland [. . . .], is the fifth chapter ‘Women’ devoted to those female leaders, usually widows of murdered dons who have assumed the mantle of leadership among the Camorrista in recent years, to include one Anna Mazza, brain behind the Moccia clan for two decades, or Immacolata Capone, or Erminia Giulano. “Women [our narrator tells us] are better able to confront crime as if it were only momentary, or someone’s opinion, or a step one takes before quickly moving on. Clan women demonstrate this very clearly. They feel offended and vilified when they are called Camorristi or criminals, as if ‘criminal’ were merely a judgment of an action, not an objective way of behaving. In fact, contrary to the men, so far not one female Camorra boss has ever repented. Not one.” (p. 150)
It is in this chapter devoted to the women of the System that Saviano’s Gomorrah reaches its profound center with its beatific vision of the fourteen-year old Annalisa Durante (the original given name of Dante), killed in a cross fire shootout between warring Secondigliano factions. Annalisa is guilty only of having been born in Naples and with ambition to be with her friends listening to music and to someday marry and raise a family. Amidst grieving families, a church filled to capacity for her funeral mass, police and carabinieri, reporters and film crews, Annalisa’s white casket is carried from the church to its final resting place. En route a classmate “calls her cell phone and the ringing from the coffin “is the new requiem. Musical tones, a sweet melody, No one answers.” (p. 156) In the terraced Purgatorio, Dante, at the summit meets for the first time Beatrice, whom he loved once when both were children on earth. No longer with his guide Virgil, who as a non-Christian must remain in Limbo, it will be Beatrice who leads Dante toward his vision of Paradise.
Part Two of Gomorrah comprises six chapters each of which exhibits an aspect of the criminal System: the technology of war, ‘Kalashnikov’; the construction industry, ‘Concrete’; imagery in popular culture, ‘Hollywood’; the parish priest as hero and martyr, (and where the reader first finds the Camorra and Naples compared to the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:24-29, KJV)), ‘Don Peppino Diana’; international expansion, ‘Aberdeen, Mondragone’; and the corrupt economy of waste management, ‘Land of Fires’. Where Part One of Saviano’s novel is a descent into the underworld of crime in Naples and the System or Camorra, Part Two describes attempted purgation of the manifold underpinnings of crime in the activities of the people who are called upon to build a new conscience of ethical solidarity in their daily lives. In the end, Saviano as narrator ponders if it is even possible to withstand the power of the System.
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LibraryThing member rmacd47
This is one of the worst books I have read. There is no discernible organization to the book. It is clearly written only for an Italian audience. The reader is assumed to have a wealth of knowledge about the intricacies of Italian politics , society, and current events. The book is grossly
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overwritten and melodramatic. All in all, a waste of time. Show Less
LibraryThing member stephmo
Gomorrah serves as an account of the history of Naples’s Crime System, called the Camorra by outsiders and news outlets, that has a hold on everything from high fashion to milk to narcotics in a trade that reaches across most of Europe and into China.
I read this and now eye my Prada's that I got
Much of the first part of the book explains the difference between Naples’s new crime system and the old-style mafia. The long and short of it - the Camorra has basically infiltrated many businesses and low-end government making it impossible to do anything without running money through their organization which can be franchised out infinitely. The Camorra doesn't rely on the old-school family model - it's not a closed-Italian-only business. The Chinese have a strong presence, other Europeans and even women carry out boss roles in the Camorra.
This is not to say that the Camorra is a melting pot of happy diversity. In their system, war is brutal and the deaths are far-reaching. Bosses are aware that their retirements will be forced. These detailed who-killed-who-then-killed-who depictions probably weaken the book a bit, as it becomes this blur of names and places and steps away from Roberto's strength in telling the story of the Camorra through vignettes.
My only real complaint in Roberto's story is that he never offers much of his role in the system. If he entered the world as a journalist and stole a delivery of shoes with a Chinese outfit, but got close enough to individuals to be shown some of the things he saw in the book, he doesn't offer up how this happened. I know there's more to the story than that...
I read this and now eye my Prada's that I got
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on deep discount with great suspicion. Much of the first part of the book explains the difference between Naples’s new crime system and the old-style mafia. The long and short of it - the Camorra has basically infiltrated many businesses and low-end government making it impossible to do anything without running money through their organization which can be franchised out infinitely. The Camorra doesn't rely on the old-school family model - it's not a closed-Italian-only business. The Chinese have a strong presence, other Europeans and even women carry out boss roles in the Camorra.
This is not to say that the Camorra is a melting pot of happy diversity. In their system, war is brutal and the deaths are far-reaching. Bosses are aware that their retirements will be forced. These detailed who-killed-who-then-killed-who depictions probably weaken the book a bit, as it becomes this blur of names and places and steps away from Roberto's strength in telling the story of the Camorra through vignettes.
My only real complaint in Roberto's story is that he never offers much of his role in the system. If he entered the world as a journalist and stole a delivery of shoes with a Chinese outfit, but got close enough to individuals to be shown some of the things he saw in the book, he doesn't offer up how this happened. I know there's more to the story than that...
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LibraryThing member mobill76
The author gives an insider's view of a monstrous system that is all the more disquieting because you're in there with him. Besides the titillation of so much blood and excess, what kept me reading was the intelligence and heart in the work. The tone sounds raw and cynical but it isn't without
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occasional touches of poetry and sentimentalism. The author never stayed in one mode long enough to get tiresome. I was shocked by what this book had to say. I don't know if I was convinced by the litany of the names and places or if I just sympathized with a good writer. His heart's in the right place. I hope it's still beating somewhere. Show Less
LibraryThing member GingerbreadMan
I was slightly surprised there weren’t more uploads of this one on LT. Here in Sweden, the hype was massive when this book came out. Perhaps it was due to the fact that Saviano got support and shelter from the Swedish PEN club after getting a price on his head, which brought up the whole Swedish
I’m underwhelmed. There should be so much to like here. The story of the world’s possibly mightiest crime organisation, the Napolitano Camorra (which easily outguns the Sicilian Mafia, including it’s American cousin), peppered with corruption, violence, vendettas, family feuds, upstanding priests, nicknames and world-wide tentacles, all told by journalist, a local lad who rides around on his vespa fuming over the criminal grip on his home region. But Saviano’s eagerness to keep it on a ground level (or gut level, he would probably prefer) makes the book confusing and tiresome to try to follow.
There’s no exposition here, no real analysis and no presentation of structure, making the almost 400 pages feel mostly like a long chain of isolated events stacked on top of each other. Not to mention an endless string of names who are casually introduced as if we all knew them already. It’s one of those reads where you find your mind constantly wandering off. Slippery, is the word. Mostly, it feels like a book where the already initiated are to gasp over what Saviano dares to mention, in his sparse hard-boiled style. Which is commendable and brave of course. But it doesn’t make for a very engaging read, save a handful of memorable episodes. A strange waste of rich material.
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Academy passivity in the Rushdie fatwa affair again. Or perhaps it was just that Saviano came across as real brave badass type of guy during his stay in Sweden. Nevertheless this book sold out printing after printing and more often than not it’s slot on the store shelves was empty. Two years ago, this was the book everybody gave their dad for Christmas.I’m underwhelmed. There should be so much to like here. The story of the world’s possibly mightiest crime organisation, the Napolitano Camorra (which easily outguns the Sicilian Mafia, including it’s American cousin), peppered with corruption, violence, vendettas, family feuds, upstanding priests, nicknames and world-wide tentacles, all told by journalist, a local lad who rides around on his vespa fuming over the criminal grip on his home region. But Saviano’s eagerness to keep it on a ground level (or gut level, he would probably prefer) makes the book confusing and tiresome to try to follow.
There’s no exposition here, no real analysis and no presentation of structure, making the almost 400 pages feel mostly like a long chain of isolated events stacked on top of each other. Not to mention an endless string of names who are casually introduced as if we all knew them already. It’s one of those reads where you find your mind constantly wandering off. Slippery, is the word. Mostly, it feels like a book where the already initiated are to gasp over what Saviano dares to mention, in his sparse hard-boiled style. Which is commendable and brave of course. But it doesn’t make for a very engaging read, save a handful of memorable episodes. A strange waste of rich material.
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LibraryThing member WWDG
Not a lot to add to what others have said about this book, other than how depressed it made me feel when you realise just what the Camorra have done to the economy and people of Southern Italy, especially in the Campania region.
This is not the glorified mafia families of Hollywood film legend, but
As another reviewer said, it is not a light and fluffy beach read, although ironically I did read it whilst on holiday, but a fascinating investigation into the far reaching consequences of the power of the Camorra.
This is not the glorified mafia families of Hollywood film legend, but
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the horrifying truth of the vice like grip that these people have over a whole region of Italy. There does not seem to be any pie that they don’t have their fingers in, or any family in the region that is not affected by them in some way or another. As another reviewer said, it is not a light and fluffy beach read, although ironically I did read it whilst on holiday, but a fascinating investigation into the far reaching consequences of the power of the Camorra.
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LibraryThing member Darrol
An excellent book on the implications of organized crime. Hard to know quite what to do.
LibraryThing member Kirconnell
He was 13 when he saw his first dead body. This wasn't unusual considering that Roberto Saviano grew up in Naples the home of one of the most powerful and brutal crime organizations in Italy....the Camorra. What is unusual is that he possessed the courage to publish this book detailing the history,
My only complaint about the book was its meandering style which with more cohesiveness would have left a more powerful impression.
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methods, and wars that raged throughout the region while he was growing up in spite of the risk to himself. I found the book to be a passionate and shocking disclosure of a crime group that doesn't stop with their involvement in military arms and narcotics. They are involved in projects and businesses which affect every individual around the globe. Businesses such as fashion, agriculture, restaurants, and toxic waste disposal. Their casual disdain of human life could result in reprecussions of enormous impact. My only complaint about the book was its meandering style which with more cohesiveness would have left a more powerful impression.
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LibraryThing member stefano
This book is extremely uneven. On one side it contains many authentic and extremely perceptive observations (a description of the economics of cutting cocaine, an analysis of the playlist of a Camorra posse as they prepare themselves for an attack, ...) on the other side it delivers considerably
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less than I was led to expect from the Italian press. for example, it is extremely unclear what specific and previously unknown information Saviano delivers on the system he is denouncing. Similarly, Saviano seems to attribute to the Camorra economic and organizational abilities that seem frankly hard to believe for no other reason that other countries can reasonably be expected to have their own criminal organizations and not be completely dependent on Camorra for illicit traffic of goods and people. Pet peeve: to describe the economics and logistics of Camorra Saviano uses very often the word 'esponenziale', which he uses as if it meant 'very big'. Show Less
LibraryThing member MikeBarton
For many people Italian orgainsed crime means the Mafia. Before the Mafia there was the Camorra. As the Mafia are to Sicily the Camprra are to Campania, the region surrounding Naples. With tentacles everywhere extortion to drugs to high fashion and even an interest in the redevelopment of the World
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Trade Centre site in New York. Show Less
LibraryThing member squarespiral
Interesting journalistic work about one arm of the Italian Mob from the perspective of an inhabitant of the area. Quite an emotional and personal book with an unique angle. Because of this however, the book quickly became boring for me - there was not enough structure or top down perspective for me
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to sort all the small experiences and factoids that the author presents into the big picture. Show Less
LibraryThing member madcatnip72
Hard-hitting, heart breaking book about the Neopolitian mafia. Arms and drug smuggling, slave labor, construction company graft and dumping pesticides into drinking water - there is nothing they won't do for money. Book is full of poignant vignettes like the ringing cellphone on the coffin of a 14
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year old girl caught in the crossfire and the world's most user-friendly tool ever developed by man - the AK-47. Saviano writing (and the translation) is brilliant. Book clearly shows that there is nothing sexy or cool about organized crime. Show Less
LibraryThing member Widsith
There's an extraordinary scene near the start of Gomorrah that I don't think I'll be able to forget. Roberto Saviano, investigating the numerous clothing sweatshops in the countryside around Naples, happens to be with one of the master tailors when he turns on the television in his run-down shack
The man breaks down in tears. He had no idea – they just told him that one was ‘being sent to America’. He's one of the greatest tailors in Italy and he's just dressed one of the most beautiful women in the world – but he can't tell anyone. His job doesn't officially exist. He works twelve-hour shifts. He's paid six hundred euros a month.
How? Why? Because this is how even top fashion houses get stuff made – they (or possibly, for better deniability, some subsidiary entity) auction out the tailoring to groups of sweatshops in the South, who fall over themselves with promises to produce the work faster and cheaper than their rivals. Everyone who wants to take part is given the material, and whoever produces the right quality work first gets paid. Everyone else has to sell off their products however they can – in Asia, or Eastern Europe, or, as a last resort, in market stalls. That brand-name handbag being sold by a Nigerian outside the railway station may not be a forgery at all, but rather, as Saviano puts it, ‘a sort of true fake’ that really lacks nothing but the company's imprimatur.
It's just another part of The System – meaning the dense web of Camorra-controlled activities whose agents and beneficiaries extend not just up into northern Italy, but across Europe and, in fact, around the world.
The Camorra are much more numerous than Cosa Nostra or the 'Ndrangheta, and much more deadly – they've been responsible for more deaths than the Sicilian Mafia, Basque separatists or the IRA. (Campania has one of the highest murder rates in Europe.) That's nasty enough, but what's really chilling is how pervasive their control is, and quite how much economic power, according to Saviano, they wield.
In fact they're presented here as not so much a crime syndicate as a purified distillation of naked capitalism. It's not just drugs, it's also a vast global supply chain, a portfolio of legitimate and semi-legitimate businesses which all support and feed off each other, so that trying to find some area or segment that has not been tainted starts to feel hopelessly naïve.
Drugs, though, are important, and Saviano is impatient with worthy pontifications about the sociology of the ghetto. As he points out, ‘An area where dozens of clans are operating, with profit levels comparable only to a maneuver in high finance—just one family’s activity invoices 300 million euros annually—cannot be a ghetto.’ The numbers are sobering:
A kilo of cocaine costs the producer 1,000 euros, but by the time it reaches the wholesaler, it’s already worth 30,000. After the first cut 30 kilos becomes 150: a market value of approximately 15 million euros. With a larger cut, 30 kilos can be stretched to 200.
But you expect drugs. What I didn't expect was to hear about the Camorra controlling all the merchandise flowing in and out of Naples port; or how they have taken over Italy's waste disposal industry. This last is particularly upsetting: Saviano details how industrial and chemical waste is mixed with gravel or mislabeled so that it can be more easily transported, and then dumped in vast landfills. One abandoned quarry near Naples was found to have 58,000 truck loads of illicit waste in it. Child labourers are used to unload the barrels, which are acutely toxic. The area has inflated rates of cancers – but it isn't just a problem of the south. The activity is directly linked to big Italian companies in the Veneto or the capital, and in fact Saviano says that without this under-the-counter service from the Camorra, Italy would never have met the economic conditions for entering the EU.
Holding it all together are the capos and bosses who hide away in armoured mega-villas, conferring with accountants and issuing instructions to prosecute the latest inter-clan killing spree. The most important have jaunty Neapolitan nicknames – 'a scigna (the monkey), 'o scellone (the angel), 'o 'ntufato (the angry one). Local politicians are generally helpful to the clans, when they aren't outright members. The Camorra is often an area's main economy; as Saviano puts it, ‘refusing a relationship with them would be like the deputy mayor of Turin refusing to meet with the top management of Fiat.’
Their opponents are beheaded by circular saw, beaten to death in front of their families, or thrown into wells along with a couple of hand-grenades to take care of murder and burial all in one. In 2001, a guy called Antonio Magliulo made a pass at a boss's cousin:
They took him to the beach, tied him to a chair facing the sea, and began to stuff his mouth and nose with sand. Magliulo tried to breathe, swallowing and spitting sand, blowing it out his nose, vomiting, chewing, and twisting his neck. His saliva, mixing with the sand, formed a kind of primitive cement, a gluey substance that slowly suffocated him.
It is refreshingly jarring to read a book which links this violence with the run-down kids and sweatshop workers who drive it all – that does not, in other words, glorify it. We are a long way from cool Ray Liotta voiceovers and Tony Bennett soundtracks. (Far from Hollywood looking to the Mafia for inspiration, it's actually the other way round – Camorra bosses model their mansions on Al Pacino's house in Scarface, kids angle their guns sideways like Tarantino stars, and one female capo has a retinue of women bodyguards dressed in fluorescent yellow like Uma Thurman out of Kill Bill.)
The book generates a lot of disgust and outrage, and I wish there were a few more suggestions for what we could productively do with these feelings. Perhaps Saviano doesn't know any ways left to be an ethical consumer; certainly the tone often borders on the pessimistic. But it's saved from defeatism by his trust in the power of language.
In Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels, Lila is constantly pushing Lenù, the respected writer, to finally write the devastating exposé of local Camorristi that she thinks will bring them down. Lenù can't quite do it, and the book she writes doesn't have the effect they were hoping. But Roberto Saviano really did lift the lid on a lot of things that Italians didn't know about or didn't talk about. The effects were dramatic, not least on his own life: he was put under police protection in 2006, and has lived outside Italy since 2008. But he made ignoring the issues infinitely more difficult. Words still have power, and someone using them like Saviano needs to be celebrated and protected.
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one evening. It's Oscars night, and Angelina Jolie is on the red carpet – wearing one of his handmade outfits.The man breaks down in tears. He had no idea – they just told him that one was ‘being sent to America’. He's one of the greatest tailors in Italy and he's just dressed one of the most beautiful women in the world – but he can't tell anyone. His job doesn't officially exist. He works twelve-hour shifts. He's paid six hundred euros a month.
How? Why? Because this is how even top fashion houses get stuff made – they (or possibly, for better deniability, some subsidiary entity) auction out the tailoring to groups of sweatshops in the South, who fall over themselves with promises to produce the work faster and cheaper than their rivals. Everyone who wants to take part is given the material, and whoever produces the right quality work first gets paid. Everyone else has to sell off their products however they can – in Asia, or Eastern Europe, or, as a last resort, in market stalls. That brand-name handbag being sold by a Nigerian outside the railway station may not be a forgery at all, but rather, as Saviano puts it, ‘a sort of true fake’ that really lacks nothing but the company's imprimatur.
It's just another part of The System – meaning the dense web of Camorra-controlled activities whose agents and beneficiaries extend not just up into northern Italy, but across Europe and, in fact, around the world.
The Camorra are much more numerous than Cosa Nostra or the 'Ndrangheta, and much more deadly – they've been responsible for more deaths than the Sicilian Mafia, Basque separatists or the IRA. (Campania has one of the highest murder rates in Europe.) That's nasty enough, but what's really chilling is how pervasive their control is, and quite how much economic power, according to Saviano, they wield.
In fact they're presented here as not so much a crime syndicate as a purified distillation of naked capitalism. It's not just drugs, it's also a vast global supply chain, a portfolio of legitimate and semi-legitimate businesses which all support and feed off each other, so that trying to find some area or segment that has not been tainted starts to feel hopelessly naïve.
Drugs, though, are important, and Saviano is impatient with worthy pontifications about the sociology of the ghetto. As he points out, ‘An area where dozens of clans are operating, with profit levels comparable only to a maneuver in high finance—just one family’s activity invoices 300 million euros annually—cannot be a ghetto.’ The numbers are sobering:
A kilo of cocaine costs the producer 1,000 euros, but by the time it reaches the wholesaler, it’s already worth 30,000. After the first cut 30 kilos becomes 150: a market value of approximately 15 million euros. With a larger cut, 30 kilos can be stretched to 200.
But you expect drugs. What I didn't expect was to hear about the Camorra controlling all the merchandise flowing in and out of Naples port; or how they have taken over Italy's waste disposal industry. This last is particularly upsetting: Saviano details how industrial and chemical waste is mixed with gravel or mislabeled so that it can be more easily transported, and then dumped in vast landfills. One abandoned quarry near Naples was found to have 58,000 truck loads of illicit waste in it. Child labourers are used to unload the barrels, which are acutely toxic. The area has inflated rates of cancers – but it isn't just a problem of the south. The activity is directly linked to big Italian companies in the Veneto or the capital, and in fact Saviano says that without this under-the-counter service from the Camorra, Italy would never have met the economic conditions for entering the EU.
Holding it all together are the capos and bosses who hide away in armoured mega-villas, conferring with accountants and issuing instructions to prosecute the latest inter-clan killing spree. The most important have jaunty Neapolitan nicknames – 'a scigna (the monkey), 'o scellone (the angel), 'o 'ntufato (the angry one). Local politicians are generally helpful to the clans, when they aren't outright members. The Camorra is often an area's main economy; as Saviano puts it, ‘refusing a relationship with them would be like the deputy mayor of Turin refusing to meet with the top management of Fiat.’
Their opponents are beheaded by circular saw, beaten to death in front of their families, or thrown into wells along with a couple of hand-grenades to take care of murder and burial all in one. In 2001, a guy called Antonio Magliulo made a pass at a boss's cousin:
They took him to the beach, tied him to a chair facing the sea, and began to stuff his mouth and nose with sand. Magliulo tried to breathe, swallowing and spitting sand, blowing it out his nose, vomiting, chewing, and twisting his neck. His saliva, mixing with the sand, formed a kind of primitive cement, a gluey substance that slowly suffocated him.
It is refreshingly jarring to read a book which links this violence with the run-down kids and sweatshop workers who drive it all – that does not, in other words, glorify it. We are a long way from cool Ray Liotta voiceovers and Tony Bennett soundtracks. (Far from Hollywood looking to the Mafia for inspiration, it's actually the other way round – Camorra bosses model their mansions on Al Pacino's house in Scarface, kids angle their guns sideways like Tarantino stars, and one female capo has a retinue of women bodyguards dressed in fluorescent yellow like Uma Thurman out of Kill Bill.)
The book generates a lot of disgust and outrage, and I wish there were a few more suggestions for what we could productively do with these feelings. Perhaps Saviano doesn't know any ways left to be an ethical consumer; certainly the tone often borders on the pessimistic. But it's saved from defeatism by his trust in the power of language.
In Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels, Lila is constantly pushing Lenù, the respected writer, to finally write the devastating exposé of local Camorristi that she thinks will bring them down. Lenù can't quite do it, and the book she writes doesn't have the effect they were hoping. But Roberto Saviano really did lift the lid on a lot of things that Italians didn't know about or didn't talk about. The effects were dramatic, not least on his own life: he was put under police protection in 2006, and has lived outside Italy since 2008. But he made ignoring the issues infinitely more difficult. Words still have power, and someone using them like Saviano needs to be celebrated and protected.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Ramirez
It's awful how reality can be even worse than imagination.
Insightful.
Insightful.
LibraryThing member PaolaM
This is a great book - the writing style is dry, which is fine for what is a terrifying description of Camorra and organised crime in modern day Italy. It covers the new Camorra and the new business lines it is entering, expanding internationally to extend its reach to an extent that is
Saviano shows us how it permeates everyday life, how a certain life style can become something to aspire to for children who do not expect to live beyond 30 and discuss as a matter of fact which type of violent death is more desirable (shot in teh face, if you ask).
A must read.
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mindboggling.Saviano shows us how it permeates everyday life, how a certain life style can become something to aspire to for children who do not expect to live beyond 30 and discuss as a matter of fact which type of violent death is more desirable (shot in teh face, if you ask).
A must read.
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LibraryThing member nmele
A first person report and anguished cry detailing the activities of organized crime (Camorra) in Naples and around the world. I will never look at my trash, designer-label clothes or cement the same way again.
LibraryThing member lxydis
depressing, intense, hard to read but fascinating. If you can't finish this, see the brilliant movie version.
LibraryThing member Opinionated
Its hard to see how this brave, lucid and heroic book wouldnt' get 5 stars from any reviewer. Even better, the movie version, whilst having only tenuous links with the book, is brilliant in its own right. Saviano is a journalist of an unusual type these days - prepared to get down and dirty (in
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this case as a manual labourer) rather than rely on press releases, gossip and twitter. He has a no nonsense style; he points the finger, backs it up with facts, and adds local colour for illumination. He can surely never live in Napoli again and in many ways this is his triumph. Should be compulsory reading not just for its exposure of of the Camorra but more disturbingly for the way it has blended into legal capitalism. In many ways, Saviano argues, capitalism cannot exist without the Camorra and its ilk. Soberingly he is probably right Show Less
LibraryThing member elmoelle
I have always categorized the italian mob in my head as something that doesn't really exist any more and only lives on in movies and television. Boy was I wrong! In this wonderful non-fiction book Roberto Saviano details the many tentacles of the Cammorah, the italian mafia that is centered in the
Show More
southern part of Italy. Saviano describes the manner in which the crime syndicates have worked their way into many sectors of legitimate enterprise, such as construction, waste management and the garment industry. Because Saviano, who is a native of the area he is writing about, has a philosophy degree in addition to his career as a journalist, he writes not only about the facts of the criminal gangs, but also what living in such a society does to the souls of the people who live there. I found this book to be a sobering antidote to violence portrayed as glamorous, as it is in so many facets of popular culture. Show Less
LibraryThing member jcovington
I've finished. This book should have been fascinating. The subject matter certainly is. But, it is not. Maybe something was lost in translation, but I spent most of my time reading it simply lost.
Maybe it was just my expectations for the book? Probably, but nevertheless, I wouldn't really
Maybe it was just my expectations for the book? Probably, but nevertheless, I wouldn't really
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recommend this even though the subject matter (The Napolese 'mafia' rather than the Sicilian one) is interesting. Show Less
LibraryThing member Haidji
When people say "Italian Mafia" they think about the "Cosa Nostra",
The "Cosa Nostra" has a single rulebook and a single structure, building up in a pyramid from the soldiers at the base to the boss of bosses at the apex.
In Gomorrah, Saviano writes about "The Neapolitan Camorra", or "The System" as
This is a book about an Italian Mafia almost nobody talks about, the one concentrated in Naples - The Camorra.
A must read if you want to know more about "The System".
The "Cosa Nostra" has a single rulebook and a single structure, building up in a pyramid from the soldiers at the base to the boss of bosses at the apex.
In Gomorrah, Saviano writes about "The Neapolitan Camorra", or "The System" as
Show More
it is known by those on its inside, is a vast, pullulating world of gangs. Gomorrah is an excellent book about the workings of the South Italian Mafia.This is a book about an Italian Mafia almost nobody talks about, the one concentrated in Naples - The Camorra.
A must read if you want to know more about "The System".
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LibraryThing member fizzypops
This is an important and very brave account of the continued control the camorra exert over much of Italian life. While focused on Naples and the Campania region, Saviano takes us on a surreal side trip to Aberdeen, into painstaking detail of the rivalry among the clans, and explores the dynamics
I'd recommend this work to those wishing to delve deeper into the dynamics of the modern day mafia. It's a story that needs to be told and I commend Saviano for his bravery in telling it. This work will lend weight to those who consider Italy, even today, the sick man of Europe.
Perhaps some of this was lost in translation but the narrative is a bit clunky and the ending, very sudden. I would have liked to see the author's recommended further reading.
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of living in a violent and corrupt society. It's the latter that both compels the reader to stay with the narrative, but also diminishes the daily murder toll to a very ordinary banality. I'd recommend this work to those wishing to delve deeper into the dynamics of the modern day mafia. It's a story that needs to be told and I commend Saviano for his bravery in telling it. This work will lend weight to those who consider Italy, even today, the sick man of Europe.
Perhaps some of this was lost in translation but the narrative is a bit clunky and the ending, very sudden. I would have liked to see the author's recommended further reading.
Show Less
LibraryThing member elmoelle
I have always categorized the italian mob in my head as something that doesn't really exist any more and only lives on in movies and television. Boy was I wrong! In this wonderful non-fiction book Roberto Saviano details the many tentacles of the Cammorah, the italian mafia that is centered in the
Show More
southern part of Italy. Saviano describes the manner in which the crime syndicates have worked their way into many sectors of legitimate enterprise, such as construction, waste management and the garment industry. Because Saviano, who is a native of the area he is writing about, has a philosophy degree in addition to his career as a journalist, he writes not only about the facts of the criminal gangs, but also what living in such a society does to the souls of the people who live there. I found this book to be a sobering antidote to violence portrayed as glamorous, as it is in so many facets of popular culture. Show Less
Subjects
Awards
Premio Viareggio Rèpaci (2006)
Christian Science Monitor Best Book (Nonfiction — 2007)
Language
Original language
Italian
Original publication date
2006
Physical description
328 p.; 7.48 inches
ISBN
8483468468 / 9788483468463