Gomorrah is Roberto Saviano’s nel mezzo del cammin de nostra vita into the bowels of the Neapolitan criminal System familiarly known as the Camorra and often contrasted with the Sicilian Mafia. The headquarters of the System is Naples and its environs, with international, ‘global’ enterprise links to other European and Asian cities with especial interest in the fashion industry, but with continuing control of illicit drug trafficking, extortion, and racketeering in Naples and throughout Europe.

‘The Port’ (Chapter 1) opens with the scene of a docking crane off-loading a ship’s container that accidently spills its contents of frozen human bodies, which “looked like mannequins [. . .] men, women, even a few children [. . .] frozen, stacked one on top of another, packed like sardines.” Chinese workers who had paid a percentage of their wages to be returned post mortem to be buried in their homeland. “Everything that exists [Saviano as narrator says] passes through [. . .] the port of Naples.” The dynamics of markets, capital, and consumer goods on a global scale coupled with greed and treachery drive the risk takers to bypass taxes and tariffs “the deadwood of profit” for more money, merchandise, and ultimate mercantile power.

“Angelina Jolie” (Chapter 2) is a portrait of a Neapolitan sweat shop where illicit ‘designer-labeled’ knock-off garments are assembled by low-paid yet skilled workers. Pasquale, adept worker with fabrics, also teaches his competitors in China by applying his craft in front of a camera (“take great are with the seams [which have] to be light but not nonexistent”) which images and simultaneous translation into Chinese are transmitted to China’s own sweat shops. Pasquale, with the face of an old man “constantly buried in fabric” knew also the ins and outs of clothing design of pants, jackets, dresses, even the exact number of washings a fabric could undergo before sagging. One evening while surfing TV channels, Pasquale froze at the image of actress Jolie at the Oscars dressed in a gorgeous white suit. He still remembered the measurements, the form of its neckline. Pasquale had made the garment to be shipped to America, as his suppliers had told him, but he was stunned and could say nothing, a “satisfaction that went uncelebrated.” Pasquale left the garment industry to drive trucks for one of the Camorra ‘families’. For our narrator Pasquale’s anonymous experience in the new global economics “seems an amended chapter of Marx’s Capital, a paragraph added to Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, a new sentence in John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, a note in Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.”

After two long reportorial chapters on the activities of The System so-called and the decades-long Secondigliano War which since 1979 has resulted in some 3,600 murdered victims of the Camorra: “more than the Sicilian Mafia, more than the ‘Ndrangheta, more that the Russian Mafia, more than the Albanian families, more than the total number of deaths by the ETA in Spain and the IRA in Ireland [. . . .], is the fifth chapter ‘Women’ devoted to those female leaders, usually widows of murdered dons who have assumed the mantle of leadership among the Camorrista in recent years, to include one Anna Mazza, brain behind the Moccia clan for two decades, or Immacolata Capone, or Erminia Giulano. “Women [our narrator tells us] are better able to confront crime as if it were only momentary, or someone’s opinion, or a step one takes before quickly moving on. Clan women demonstrate this very clearly. They feel offended and vilified when they are called Camorristi or criminals, as if ‘criminal’ were merely a judgment of an action, not an objective way of behaving. In fact, contrary to the men, so far not one female Camorra boss has ever repented. Not one.” (p. 150)

It is in this chapter devoted to the women of the System that Saviano’s Gomorrah reaches its profound center with its beatific vision of the fourteen-year old Annalisa Durante (the original given name of Dante), killed in a cross fire shootout between warring Secondigliano factions. Annalisa is guilty only of having been born in Naples and with ambition to be with her friends listening to music and to someday marry and raise a family. Amidst grieving families, a church filled to capacity for her funeral mass, police and carabinieri, reporters and film crews, Annalisa’s white casket is carried from the church to its final resting place. En route a classmate “calls her cell phone and the ringing from the coffin “is the new requiem. Musical tones, a sweet melody, No one answers.” (p. 156) In the terraced Purgatorio, Dante, at the summit meets for the first time Beatrice, whom he loved once when both were children on earth. No longer with his guide Virgil, who as a non-Christian must remain in Limbo, it will be Beatrice who leads Dante toward his vision of Paradise.

Part Two of Gomorrah comprises six chapters each of which exhibits an aspect of the criminal System: the technology of war, ‘Kalashnikov’; the construction industry, ‘Concrete’; imagery in popular culture, ‘Hollywood’; the parish priest as hero and martyr, (and where the reader first finds the Camorra and Naples compared to the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:24-29, KJV)), ‘Don Peppino Diana’; international expansion, ‘Aberdeen, Mondragone’; and the corrupt economy of waste management, ‘Land of Fires’. Where Part One of Saviano’s novel is a descent into the underworld of crime in Naples and the System or Camorra, Part Two describes attempted purgation of the manifold underpinnings of crime in the activities of the people who are called upon to build a new conscience of ethical solidarity in their daily lives. In the end, Saviano as narrator ponders if it is even possible to withstand the power of the System. ( )

For many people Italian orgainsed crime means the Mafia. Before the Mafia there was the Camorra. As the Mafia are to Sicily the Camprra are to Campania, the region surrounding Naples. With tentacles everywhere extortion to drugs to high fashion and even an interest in the redevelopment of the World Trade Centre site in New York. ( )

I always have a hard time reviewing non-fiction books, as I do not know enough about many of the subjects to give a quality review of the information. That is my problem in this case. I know next to nothing about Italian organized crime, so all I can attest to is the entertainment value. In that area, this book is pretty good. I think that the writing loses something in translation at times, but overall the book is readable and quite engaging. The stories are often disturbing and funny at the same time. I'd recommend this work. ( )

This book is extremely uneven. On one side it contains many authentic and extremely perceptive observations (a description of the economics of cutting cocaine, an analysis of the playlist of a Camorra posse as they prepare themselves for an attack, ...) on the other side it delivers considerably less than I was led to expect from the Italian press. for example, it is extremely unclear what specific and previously unknown information Saviano delivers on the system he is denouncing. Similarly, Saviano seems to attribute to the Camorra economic and organizational abilities that seem frankly hard to believe for no other reason that other countries can reasonably be expected to have their own criminal organizations and not be completely dependent on Camorra for illicit traffic of goods and people. Pet peeve: to describe the economics and logistics of Camorra Saviano uses very often the word 'esponenziale', which he uses as if it meant 'very big'. ( )

Well, I thought the story itself was fascinating, but the writing (or in this case the translation maybe) was not up to par. I read at a slower pace than usual, and I am on summer vacation here...