A first-person account of the activities of the Camorra

books:


	• Gomorrah Roberto Saviano Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 29 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

Scarily accurate

This is almost a documentary about an Italian Mafia nobody talks about, the one concentrated in Naples. The facts and the documentation are scarily accurate and, also, very enjoyable to read. I highly recommend this book!

An unromantic, grim take on organized crime in Italy

Unlike the Sopranos or the Godfather, this book does not offer a romantic, sympathetic take on Italian organized crime. This book offers a systematic, detailed exploration of how organized crime (specifically, the Camorra) has complete and total control of Italy. The author details all of the facets of society that organized crime controls. Even the environment is addressed in this book as the mob, through illegal duming of toxic waster, has ruined much of Italy, but other countries as well.

Of particular note is that there is no honor among these thieves. The complete depravity is truly unsettling, especially when you come to the conclusion that organized crime is the true power in Italy, and not any politician or elected government.

for more information click here

a must read

I've read this book to find out more about the reality of Naples and surrounding areas. I found out instead what happens around all of us no matter where we are. The book helped me understand better what organized crime does (besides selling drungs and racketeering). I had NO IDEA.
This is not fiction and it is not narrative. This is information.

5 stars for Courage and Prose

This is a worrisome portrait of the extra-legal underworld centered in and around Naples. It is run by "clans" that are much larger, more ruthless, more sophisticated and more international than the American style Mafia family. These clans compete with each other for market share in drugs, hazardous waste, high fashion, arms and anything else they choose.

The prose is absolutely wonderful. Well chosen words provide description of people, life and feelings in a way you ususally don't find in investigative journalism. Both the author and translator deserve credit because this high level of prose is maintained throughout. On pp. 214-5 there is a beautiful rumination on concrete. Phrases, "secrets in the bowels of the economy, sealed in a pancreas of silence" and "micro-criminal excrescence nourished in movies" demonstrate that the prose originates with Saviano.

Organizationally, the book is not 5 stars. It seems like these are loosely tied together articles. It is not clear how the opening part about fashion, shipping and the Chinese ties up with the rest of it. Even within the chapters there are a lot of unfinished vignettes and some come out of nowhere. For instance, Anna Vollero's minute of fame on p. 147, or the mention of local governments "dissolving" which is not explained. Does this mean the schools close? The police get laid off? There is an isolated but interesting piece on Mikhail Kalishnikov, who's invention has helped to make this all possible.

I feel like I received an education on the reach of organized crime in Italy. I knew nothing of the Aberdeen connection and little of the Sparticus trial. Some of the stories, for instance about the 14 year old recruits training with body armor are chilling.

Last year I read The Sack of Rome: How a Beautiful European Country with a Fabled History and a Storied Culture Was Taken Over by a Man Named Silvio Berlusconi which described how the government operates. Berlusconi inspired laws, enabling the accused to chose their own prosecutor and laws whereby a witness is not compelled to testify do not help in bringing an end to this scourge.

The dedicated police, prosecutors and press of Italy seem to labor in the shadows. Their lives and families are in danger, but they persist. This unheralded group deserves the respect and support of the world, if only in self interest as witness to the hazardous waste tsunami's can bring to their shores.

for more information click here

A first-person account of the activities of the Camorra

Gomorrah is a horrific first-person account of the activities of the Camorra, the Naples based organized crime system. This book would not have been written quite this way in America. Absent are formal interviews and investigations. The prose is florid and overwrought. The operation of the port of Naples is described: `... the anus of the sea were opening out, causing great pain to the sphincter muscles' [page 6]. I do not know if this has something to do with the original Italian style. Saviano writes with indignation palpable in each sentence. Once the reader gets used to the style, the picture of life in the depressed Naples hinterland is horrific. It appears that there is no legitimate way to earn a living either at the subsistence level as a laborer or at the other extreme as an entrepreneur, without breaking the law. The criminalization of day to day economic activity explains the ubiquity of the Camorra. The root of the problem appears to be political. In the presence of stifling regulation and in the absence of good governance crime families rule in a feudal fashion, making profits that could have gone to legitimate businessmen. Saviano does not fully come out and say this. One senses his disapproval of market forces and capitalism.

Readers familiar with the garbage collection woes of Naples from the international sections of newspapers will learn the underlying cause of the problem. While there is no legitimate place to dispose Naples' garbage, refuse from as far away as Milan is illegally dumped in the environs generating enormous profits for organized crime.

The primary emotion of shooting victims is not pain or anger but humiliation. Victims of mob hits are allowed to die in the streets without help, for fear that the killers will punish anyone who comes to their aid. Saviano describes an episode from his own father's life. His father was a doctor who accompanied an ambulance to the scene of a mob hit. The victim was still alive. He was advised by his nurse to wait till he died, before taking him to the hospital. Saviano's father failed to heed the advice and was beaten up in his home.

The book is somewhat haphazardly put together without a clear time-line. It contains a Homeric compendium of characters, the killed and the killers, most of who are of interest only to those who actually knew them. Perhaps that is how this book should be seen. Not as the result of a sober investigation, but as an epic account of a raging war. One with no end in sight.

for more information click here

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

A groundbreaking major bestseller in Italy, Gomorrah is Roberto Saviano?s gripping nonfiction 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 whycancer 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 important work of investigative writing that holds global significance, one heroic young man's impassioned story of a place under the rule of a murderous organization.

for more information click here

hot

not?

What's your opinion?

Write a review and share your thoughts!

recommendations

Economist Books of the year 2007
Billcap's 2007 Reads
Books I Recommend

gomorrah

Sodom and Gomorrah
Sodom and Gomorrah: In Search of Lost Time, Volume 4 (Penguin ...
Skipping Towards Gomorrah
Gomorrah: Italy's Other Mafia
Gomorrah

search for books
gomorrah

Impressum / about us