Ten Years on, Gomorrah Author Thumbs his Nose at the Mafia

Roberto Saviano, the author of Gomorrah the best selling non fiction investigational novel about the Camorra organised crime syndicate based in his hometown of Naples has celebrated ten years of living under police protection by thumbing his nose at the very men he has spent the last decade being protected from.

The book which was published to coincide with the blockbusting film has to date sold 750,000 copies in Italy alone is a bold and engrossing piece of investigative writing and also one brave young man’s story of life in a place under the rule of a murderous organisation.

Immediately drawing death threats from the Camorra with Saviano stating in a 2015 interview in the Guardian that soon after publication someone “left a leaflet in my mother’s postbox. I was living in Naples, but she was still in Caserta. It showed a photograph of me, with a pistol to my head, and the word “Condemned”” and after several more threats Saviano received a phone call in October of 2016 saying that the police were coming to place him under police protection. Talking to Italian daily La Repubblica he recalls “When they came to pick me up, I asked ‘For how long? And an officer replied, ‘for a few days I think” yet ten years on he is still considered to be a target for those he wrote about and he is still under protection.

In a Tweet posted on Monday Saviano thanked his protectors for their care and dedication in keeping him safe ending it with a Latin phrase per aspera ad astra which translates to mean “through hardships to the stars”

10 years together. 10 years you have spent more with me than with your families.
Thanks to men of my escort: 

However it has not been all plain sailing, in his interview with the Guardian two years ago Saviano said “This life is shit – it’s hard to describe how bad it is. I exist inside four walls, and the only alternative is making public appearances. I’m either at the Nobel academy having a debate on freedom of the press, or I’m inside a windowless room at a police barracks. Light and dark. There is no shade, no in between. Sometimes I look back at the watershed that divides my life before and after Gomorrah. There is a before and after for everything, including friendship. The ones I lost, who drifted away because they found it too hard to stand by me and those I’ve found – hopefully – in the last few years. The places I knew before, and the places I’ve been since. Naples has become off-limits to me, a place I can only visit in my memories. I travel around the world, leaping from country to country as though it were a checker board, doing research for my projects, searching for any tattered remains of freedom.”

Gomorrah US
Gomorrah UK

Despite these dark times Saviano refuses to back down and he refuses to be silenced; after all, as he said “I am often asked why the Camorra, this great, powerful criminal organisation, is afraid of me. I always try to make it clear: they’re not afraid of me, they’re afraid of my readers.” And ultimately Saviano is proud of what he has achieved, speaking about the media scrutiny of the crime syndicates in Italy which he describes as a “culture of blackmail” he continues that “They can’t pretend they don’t know what’s going on any more. Public opinion won’t let them off the hook”.