Blood and guts in Naples
GOMORRAH:
A Personal Journey into the Violent Empire of Naples’ Organized Crime System
By Roberto Saviano
301 pp. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, $25.00
Reviewed by David Ward
The very least one can say about Roberto Saviano’s exposé of organized crime in and around Naples is that it is an act of courage. Saviano names names, those of the criminals and on at least one occasion that of the local politician who is in the pay of the camorra, the Naples version of the Mafia. In return, Saviano has received death threats and now requires the protection of police bodyguards.
This book, the product of the first-hand observations of a young man still in his twenties who was born and brought up in camorra country, goes into great detail about how the camorra operates, how it is structured, what makes it different from the Sicilian Mafia and the Calabrian ’Ndrangeta, its ideology (a mix of militarily enforced monopoly powers and free market ideology), and the areas of business and commerce in which it has interests (not only drugs, but also high fashion, cement and waste disposal). What emerges is perhaps the fullest portrait we have ever had of the way an organized crime outfit like the camorra operates, how it builds consensus and makes itself all but impervious to the actions of magistrates and police.
Gomorrah is a mine of information, not only an eye-opener for the non-Italian readers at whom Virginia Jewiss’ translation is aimed, but also for the Italian readership that made the book a bestseller and turned Saviano into something of a celebrity, thereby attracting the attention of both the right and the wrong people. The most detailed part of the book is the long chapter dedicated to the internecine war between rival factions in the town of Secondigliano, which at its height took more than 200 lives per year. Saviano tells us that since 1979, the year in which he was born, about 3,600 lives have been lost as a result of camorra infighting—more than the lives lost to IRA and ETA terrorism, more than the lives lost to terrorism in Italy, more than those taken by any other strand of the Mafia.
The details of the war, many of them gory, are both the book’s greatest virtue and vice. At best, they shock and, paradoxically, illuminate readers about what is going on in this part of Italy. At worst, though, the descriptions of the many settling of accounts resemble a confusing laundry list of names and nicknames that is quite hard to follow. After a while, in fact, we are no longer surprised by what we read, no matter how vile the manner of death, no matter how much blood and guts are spilled.
The greatest value is that it surprises us. This happens in the book’s opening pages, which tell of the growing presence of Chinese organized crime in Naples, especially around the port, and make for some of the book’s best reading. There are other surprises that I do not want to give away, but without spilling too many beans I can say that fans of Angelina Jolie, consumers of Parmalat products, and the inhabitants of Aberdeen, Scotland, have good reason to take a look at Gomorrah. Fans of Uma Thurman in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, of Al Pacino in Brian De Palma’s Scarface, and of the whole cast of Godfather movies will also be interested to find out how their passion for the screen personae of their idols is shared with aspiring young criminals, who go out of their way to imitate cinematic dress and language codes, many of which have now replaced indigenous codes. The camorra, it transpires, now speaks and looks Hollywood. When it comes to defining a young cammorista’s self-image, speech and look, there’s nothing like US popular culture.
But as well as being a narrative of villains, Gomorrah is also, and importantly, a narrative of at least two heroes. The first is Pier Paolo Pasolini, the left-wing Italian intellectual, murdered in 1975 in circumstances that still are not entirely clear, who has become since his death a beacon of resistance, an image of dissent in an ocean of conformity and corruption. It is to his grave in northeast Italy that Saviano goes to render homage and seek inspiration in a moment of frustration and rage. In a newspaper column he wrote for one of Italy’s leading daily newspapers, Pasolini claimed that he knew who was responsible for the murky events that had marked Italian political life in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Those events, which consisted of placing bombs in public places in an effort to thwart any possible electoral advance by the Italian Communist Party, were known as the “Strategy of Tension.”
The other hero is Don Peppino Diana, a courageous Catholic priest who took a stand against the local cammoristi. In a document he made public on Christmas Day 1993, the priest asked the local faithful to turn the clan members into pariahs by excluding them from the church community and denying them the sacraments. This was enough for him to be murdered a few months later by a camorra hit squad. What both Pasolini and Don Peppino had in common, and what Saviano shares with them, is hope and belief in the power of the written word. Pasolini’s and Don Peppino’s words left a mark, made a noise, gathered up and gave voice to underlying currents of thought, feelings, fears, hopes, and desires, and as such became potential agents of change. These were words that registered a civil protest, an act of resistance. Gomorrah is a book that has the same aspiration.
One can only be full of admiration for Saviano and the way he has put himself on the line, knowing full well what the consequences of his choice would be. The jury is still out on the effects a book like this can have on political and social reality. Experience rather than cynicism tells me not to expect miracles.
David Ward, Professor of Italian Studies at Wellesley College, is the author of two books in English:
A Poetics of Resistance: Narrative and the Writings of Pier Paolo Pasolini; and Antifascisms: Cultural Politics in Italy 1943-46: Benedetto Croce and the Liberals, Carlo Levi and the
“Actionists.”
He also has published one book in Italian: Carlo Levi: Gli italiani e la paura della libertà. He is currently
completing a study on the Italian antifascist intellectual Piero Gobetti.
The photo is by Anna Ward.
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