In the frame of the neoclassical Teatro Sociale of Mantua, Italy, the Festivaletteratura 2008, an annual festival of readings, meetings with writers, shows, and concerts came to an end yesterday, 7th September, with a sensational surprise, the presence of Roberto Saviano, author of Gomorra, the well-known best seller about the activities and connections of the powerful Neapolitan mafia-like organization called Camorra.
Journalist under protection
The matter of speech was focalized about the difficulties to be a journalist that writes about a organized crime: Saviano, 29 years old, lives surrounded by bodyguards and subject to continuos intimidations, the last during the trial - named “Spartacus” as the chief of slaves rebelled against Roman Empire - against 36 members of Casalesi clan.
The Italian journalist has told the big audience about the problems he had to find an apartment or to get some new friendship after the publication of the book: "In the city of Naples no one wants to be involved with a writer against Camorra”.
Camorra controls Newspapers
From the stage of the ‘800 theatre, then, he has accused the neapolitans newspapers to be connected with the gangsters, publishing catchy titles and long articles about the mighty and luxurious style of gangsters life. A point of view that seems self-opposing, whereas his writing style, even if non-fiction, uses the artificial and rhetoric technique of novel genre too.
Some topics of his book, like the forger tailor that has sewn the wedding dress of Angelina Jolie, the Villa of the boss Walter Schiavone spitting image of the Villa of Brian De Palma’s “Scarface” or the invincible power of bosses with suggestive names, like Sandokan, Beckenbauer, Ciruzzo 'o milionario, O Barone are part of a narrative mechanism that has made Gomorra, distributed in Italy by Berlusconi’s house of edition “Mondadori”, an international best seller.
Otherwise,even if the relevance of his work for the public consciousness is beyond doubt, it's time to stop to complain and to work for the future. In Naples, hundreds of men and women can’t have an apartment because they don’t have a job, they can’t have a job because they don’t want to be involved in criminal or illegal activities and they have to live scared because of their disclaimer.
But no one of them has protection or the mediatic power of the author to talk about themselves. Who are the heroes? Poor people living afraid to be stricken by a stray bullet, or a man that decided to make career fearlessly reporting stories already well documented by police statements?
