Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Gomorrah
Book Review: 5 stars for Courage and Prose
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Book Review: A Hard HItting Reality
Summary: 5 Stars
I learned about this book while in Italy where more than one person told me it was a "must read." It is! (If Italian names trouble you, skip them -- see the couple of negative reviews). This is a hard-hitting book that reveals not only what's happening in Naples and other parts of Italy, but how the Camorra's operations are linked to crime and terrorism around the world. Saviano (the author) also provides an insider perspective on the relationship between crime and the world of high fashion and luxury products. You'll never be able to look at a knock-off the same way after you've read it. It is not sensationalism, just good, solid reporting.Book Review: A Stilted Trip Through Unfamiliar Italy
Summary: 2 Stars
A full-throttle look at Cammora crime from the nitty gritty ground level, "Gomorrah" is a look behind the curtain that suffers from an author with too intimate an approach to his subject. For a Neopolitan perhaps the geography, family and clan names, capos and underbosses, murders, victims and characters are a uniting thread; but, to the average American reader I think this translation of Saviano's originial Italian work lacks some critical elements that would help to make this story more than the timeline of crime it ends up being.
There is no real protagonist to unite the series of seemingly only loosely-related vignettes, unless one counts Saviano himself, but his role is more that of tour guide, standard-bearer and narrator.
Mixed in are some really interesting details about Cammora business, the purpose and organization of the system, and the lifestyle both for the connected and unconnected. But, these are sprinkled in among dizzying references to different criminal systems, families, clans and characters. Further complicating matters, the translation (I can't speak for whether it reflects the original work) is stark and breathless. In spite of the occasional turn of phrase, metaphor or analogy, the writing is spare and unadorned.
All in all, a staccato and stilted trip through what remains -- even after reading -- an unfamiliar vantage point on Italy.
Book Review: A Walk on the Dark Side
Summary: 5 Stars
It is not often that I render an audible gasp on the first page of a book. GOMORRAH is not for the gentle souls among us. It is raw, brutally descriptive, and at the same time very informative. I thoroughly enjoyed it and can say this book will haunt my thoughts for sometime to come. If you want to walk on the dark side this is your book. Fabulous !!!Book Review: A first-person account of the activities of the Camorra
Summary: 4 Stars
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.