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Gomorrah (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Virginia Jewiss (Translator)
Key Phrases: nuova famiglia, clan managers, neighborhood capo, Don Peppino, Cosa Nostra, Paolo Di Lauro (more...)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (71 customer reviews)
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Saviano has created a perfectly realized, morally compelling journey through the brutal world of contemporary Italian mob life in this ceaselessly violent tale of the Camorra, a network of thugs, exploiters and killers who run Naples and the surrounding countryside. Armed with a police band radio, Saviano visits one crime scene after another, recording the final words and circumstances of the dying and dead. The murders described are savage, cruel and senseless: The head... hadn't been cut off with a hatchet, a clean blow, but with a metal grinder: the kind of circular saw welders use to polish soldering. The worst possible tool, and thus the most obvious choice. Jewiss's translation of Saviano's intense prose flows beautifully from the pestilence and degradation of everyday life in the teeming Neapolitan slums to the futile efforts of the police to control the rich, organic chaos that is the only way the Camorra know how to live. A stunning achievement, this is a must-read for anyone interested in the state of contemporary Europe. (Nov.)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* Saviano, an investigative journalist, uses the port city of Naples as an entry point into the nefarious dealings of the Italian crime network, the Camorra, which has a stranglehold on the global economy through its control of the international clothing market, art collecting, drug dealing, construction trades, and toxic waste disposal. Naples is the epicenter for the criminal cartel since, as Saviano says, "Everything that exists passes through here." At a time when Chinese exports of pet food and seafood have become suspect, Saviano provides a revealing examination of the ways in which black-market profit mongering and lack of regulations ruin workers' lives and endanger us all. This investigation, published in Italy in 2006, became a best-seller and won the Viareggio Literary Prize. It's a stunner of a book, as accessible to American audiences, through its searing style and timely investigation, as it is to Italians. Perhaps most importantly, Saviano's accusations are utterly convincing because of his undercover investigations: in the best Upton Sinclair tradition, he worked at a Chinese textile factory in Naples, at a construction site, even as a waiter at a Camorra family wedding. Throughout, he relies on the significant detail to carry his outrage: scores of frozen Chinese bodies spilling out onto a dock; the sight of a Chinese factory worker at the bottom of a well, beaten and stabbed to death after refusing sex with her boss. Through his firsthand observation and interviews, he lays bare the abuses fed by this well-oiled and well-hidden criminal system. Devastating. Fletcher, Connie
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (October 30, 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0374165270
  • ISBN-13: 978-0374165277
  • Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (71 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #225,125 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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More About the Author

Roberto Saviano
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Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
nuova famiglia, clan managers, neighborhood capo, area capo
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Don Peppino, Cosa Nostra, Paolo Di Lauro, San Cipriano, Nunzio De Falco, Francesco Piacenti, Giuseppe Quadrano, Cosimo Di Lauro, Las Vegas, Augusto La Torre, Santa Maria Capua Vetere, The Prophet, Villa Literno, Parco Verde, Francesco Schiavone, Antonio Bardellino, Gennaro Marino, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Carmine Schiavone, Kit Kat, Anna Mazza, Francesco Sandokan Schiavone, Court of Naples, Pietro Licciardi, Vincenzo Verde
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Customer Reviews

71 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (71 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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115 of 119 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars I read it in four days. 5 Stars for courage: He broke the silence, February 29, 2008
By Lincoln Han (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
If you have been to Italy, surely you have seen people who sell counterfeit goods on the street: Prada purses, Gucci belt, Armani wallet, pirated CD and DVD, etc. Surprisingly, most of them are not made in China, but in underground factories in Naples, the same type of factories that makes dresses for Hollywood stars. This is however, only the beginning of the story. This is a story of the underground economy of Naples, the desperation of its society and underclass, and the exploitation by the sophisticated yet short sighted criminals. The tales are not unlike those of the underground economy of New York and Chicago, but southern Italian style.

With my busy schedule running a business, these days it's hard for me to take some time and read a book in a short time. However, this book was so compelling I finished it in four days.

There are three big criminal organizations in Italy: Cosa Costra (commonly known as Mafia) from Sicily, Ngrangheta of Calabria, and the Camorra of Campania. This book is about the camorra.

First, to answer one of the reviewers from Australia who didn't understand why the author is under 24-hour police protection: This is not the first book written about the camorra or the mafia, in Italy or abroad. However, his story telling style was compelling enough to make the book a best seller in Italy and abroad. This brought to light the dirty and dark secrets of the criminal underworld in a concrete term - something you can identify with (do they control what you eat?), it infuriates you and something you react strongly. It's not just about talking about the camorra in abstract terms, but to name names, name places, and describe in vivid details about the people, their "businesses", and places. So the public realize the extent of the problem and how it affects the smallest things like milk and cookie delivery to cancer rates.

Organized crime societies thrives on secrecy and silence, there is a term for silence among the camorra "omerta". If no one speaks about it and carry on with his life, or speak about it in an abstract term like "oh it's the mafia what can I do about it?" then the camorra carries on their activities. However, with the amount of attention the author brought, especially attention to details, angered the criminals because the public gets a real view of how the system function and is lubricated. Hence they want the author dead. He broke the code of "omerta". That's why police protection is assigned to him.

Remember, if you dare to speak up against their interest, they dare to silence you in the most callous way - school teacher, shop owner, ex-member, judge, lawyer, politicians, it doesn't matter. The book shows that while claiming to be Catholics, the Camorra is even willing to take the life of a priest.

To the other reader who said that the author was trying to make money, I doubt the author made enough money to be worth of numerous death threats and constantly under protection.

I lived in that region. In fact, where I lived had its government dissolved more times than any other places in Italy due to mafia infiltration. I have seen around here urban planning disaster, environmental disaster, and cultural disaster. While the region of Campania has some beautiful parts, it is not far fetched to say it's a third world country within a major EU country.

This book explores many subjects that I have witnessed with my own eyes: the annual garbage crisis where you can't even walk on the sidewalk, and the hoodlums and idiots who set the trashes on fire to worsen the crisis; the store that was burned down because the owner was courageous and refuse to pay the Camorra a "protection" fee; the unjustifiable number of supermarkets and shopping centers in a region where the economy at the bottom.

I have been to Pozzuoli, dined in Quatieri Spagnoli (Spanish Quarter), and it's true, many of these towns are a mess. This book helped to see what the towns are the way they are, beyond the aesthetical aspect. I didnt know about the open drug market where the Camorra test new drug on buyers to see if they die to determine the right mix. The economy is in the drain, but new shopping centers keep popping up. Will those women who tried to kill each other with guns live long enough to shop there?
For the young men, is it a choice among a low-paying dead end job, constant unemployment and becoming someone "important" by joining the Camorra? "For many women, marrying a Camorrista is like receiving a loan or acquiring capital. If that capital will bear fruit and the women will become entrepreneurs, managers, or generals wives, wielding unlimited power." (P.141)

This book should be a wake up call to all the people of Campania, Italians and an alarm for the rest of us. It shows if the social and economic situation in a community is dire, and when the legitimate system is weak and severely flawed, even a small group of people, with their selfish and corruptible nature, can easily turn life into hell for the majority. You don't have to have even visited Italy to appreciate this book. Civil society is fragile and this book shows how hard it is to get rid a social cancer once its takes root.

Camorra thrives because the State has failed its citizens; it provides opportunities and illusions of power and wealth. To quote the book "The system at least grants the illusion that commitment will be recognized, that it's possible to make a career. An affiliate will never be seen as an errand boy, and girls will never feel they are being courted by a failure" (P. 109, The Secondigliano War)

I also recommend "See Naples and Die: Camorra and Organized Crime" and "Excellent Cadavers" to get a better look at the history of Camorra and Cosa Nostra (Silician Mafia) and a broader political perspective to understand the State and the mafia have at many times different sides of the same coin who needs each other to thrive.
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62 of 70 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars From Tiberio's Leap, November 4, 2007
By Alvaro Lewis "jwatson5" (Redwood City, CA USA) - See all my reviews
Behold here an unfashionable and stirring book. The pages drip with the residue of disfiguring communications left by hitmen on the lifeless bodies of their victims. I do not go in for glamorized violence and I do not watch movies with guns. Still, I turned pages of this grisly book because its message is both fascinating and urgent. The scores of deaths described are countable but only a partial number. What waste. The mafia clans of Campania, whose fractions divide business by terror, account for the fear they inspire with their omnipresent success. It is bizarre to read of this smothering and ultimately corrupting system that renovates, enriches and destroys as it spreads.

A marginal insider, Savinio here unloads the weight of his learning and the roar of his disillusionment. His book puts to pasture the works that would try to rival it as discourses or discoveries on the nature of power in society. Fans of Foucault have no idea what power is about until they have read this book. The same goes for the armchair aficionado of corporate monopoly. Much of the information Savinio relates he has gathered as an inhabitant or curious, casual employee of the clans that run Italy from the graced and volatile realm of Campania.

The first chapter on the port of Naples is likely to unsettle anyone who lives near a port of entry by sea, as it shows how illegal goods make it from sea to secrecy and to the market. The chapter called "Cement" demonstrates the relationship between contractors, bids, bias and regional economy. These two chapters alone seem to be stunning achievements. The final chapter treats the horrifying management and crippling dispersion of toxins through land, sea and air for the sake of immediate profit. There are chapters that address the subjects of women, religion, fashion, film and clan supremacy.

Saviano sheds light not on numbers and accounts but on names and traces. In the face of such an overwhelming and entrenched corruption the only power a writer or citizen can exercise in behalf of the common good is to name the names. Those who speak the truth run mortal risk but only the brave who take up that risk protect the multitude from fear, abuse, and destruction. I commend the inspiring bravery of this author and the skill with which he unwinds the horrors of our twisted realm.
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars International Organized Crime in and out of Italy today, November 20, 2007
By Chris (Long Island, NY) - See all my reviews
This book is an extremely engrossing read about the real world of high stakes organized crime operating in and out of Italy today. It will have tremendous appeal to real life crime fighters and mob aficionados across the world, not to mention anyone with generational ties to Italy as a homeland. Well written and extremely informative, it engages the reader in a tell-all approach of the extensive world wide implications of organized crime originating in and out of Naples today. Graphic and disturbing, it gives factual details only an `insider' would have access to. Particularly fascinating is the increasingly large part women play in the leading role of organized family clans. `The Godmother', if you will. One could only imagine a blockbuster film coming out of this information. This reader would have preferred more details about how the writer actually infiltrated `The System' but perhaps that will be a follow up to this amazing read.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars The truth here is Not pretty
Even before reading this book, I read many of the reviews here on Amazon. I had also viewed the movie which I had bought in Italy. Read more
Published 3 days ago by Terry M. Madsen

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book
Thanks for getting me this spellbinding, chilling account of this crime syndicate in Naples. I wanted to have my copy to give to a friend.
Published 1 month ago by Robert P. Berardino

1.0 out of 5 stars BORING.
Man, I can't tell you how disappointed I was with this book. I downloaded the audio version because it sounded interesting and got so many good reviews. Read more
Published 3 months ago by bionichands

5.0 out of 5 stars Sad but true
A personal journey of corruption that is much larger than even shown in this book. What people do for money and power is shameless.
Published 3 months ago by K. Williams

2.0 out of 5 stars EPISODIC HODGE-PODGE
The first section of this story -- about the Italian Mafia around Naples and the international garment industry and massive illegal imports from China -- has lots of interesting... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Roger Angle

5.0 out of 5 stars other face of my beloved Italy
I was always a big fan of Italy and everything Italian (food, fashion, art, design and architecture) and I travelled to Italy many times always coming back and thinking that maybe... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Lucian Rosciszewski

3.0 out of 5 stars Great story... bad story telling.
Comorra is a mesmerizing tale, the author knows his story perfectly. Insights are breathtaking.
Unfortunately, the story telling is slow, boring, and lacks oupmf! Read more
Published 6 months ago by EbyKing

5.0 out of 5 stars What l can say except 'magnificent"
l have read lots of true crime books but this one had me almost crying at times, it is an epic account of true crime, words like grim, dirty, senseless, inhumane and wasted lives... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Otis B Driftwood

3.0 out of 5 stars fair
This book i found fair. it does give some inside information about the mob in naples. however the wrtiting style isn't great. Read more
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4.0 out of 5 stars Enlightening book
I really enjoyed this book even though some of it was hard for me to keep track of. It scares me to think there are really these horrible bad people even though I know they are... Read more
Published 6 months ago by C. Bible

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