COMORRAH ITALY S OTHER MAFIA

Published to coincide with the eponymous blockbuster film, RobertoSaviano's groundbreaking and utterly compelling book is a majorinternational bestseller. Since publishing his searing expose of theircriminal activities, the author has received so many death threats fromthe Camorra that he has been assigned police protection. Known by insidersas 'the System', the Camorra, an organized crime network with a globalreach and large stakes in construction, high fashion, illicit drugs andtoxic-waste disposal, exerts a malign grip on cities and villages alongthe Neapolitan coast is the deciding factor in why Campania has thehighest murder rate in all of Europe and why cancer levels there haveskyrocketed in recent years. In pursuit of his subject, Saviano worked asan assistant at a Chinese textile manufacturer and on a construction site,both controlled by 'the System', and as a waiter at a Camorra wedding. Bornin Naples, he recalls seeing his first murder at the age of fourteen, andhow his own father, a doctor, suffered a brutal beating for trying to helpan eighteen-year-old victim, left for dead in the street. Gomorrah is botha bold and engrossing piece of investigative writing and one heroic youngman's impassioned story of a place under the rule of a murderousorganization.