Books : Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples' Organized Crime System
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 364
EAN: 9780312427795
ISBN: 0312427794
Label: Picador
Manufacturer: Picador
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: November 25, 2008
Publisher: Picador
Release Date: November 25, 2008
Sales Rank: 1200
Studio: Picador
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Product Description:
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
A groundbreaking, unprecedented bestseller in Italy, Roberto Saviano's insider account traces the decline of the city of Naples under the rule of the Camorra, an organized crime network more powerful and violent than the Mafia. The Camorra is an elaborate, international system dealing in drugs, high fashion, construction, and toxic waste, and its influence has entirely transformed life in Campania, the province surrounding Naples.Â
Since seeing his first murder victim, at thirteen, Roberto Saviano has watched the changes in his home city. For Gomorrah, he disappeared into the Camorra and witnessed at close range its audacious, sophisticated, and far-reaching corruption that has paralyzed his home city and introduced the world to a new breed of organized crime.
Average Rating: 
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Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples' Organized Crime System
good story. Scary truth.
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I'm a hundred pages into this overrated book and loud alarms are going off, the same sort of alarms that went off when I read "A Million Little Pieces" and "Running With Scissors." I will finish the book because it is reasonably compelling and because I love Italy, but I just don't believe everything I'm taking in. The book also seems without focus and at times the prose is heavy handed. The irony is that "Gomorrah" isn't nearly as organized as the crime network it describes. From the reviews, I expected a lot more.
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In Gomorrah, Saviano wades through the gates of hell, revealing the extent of criminal enterprise in southern Naples, the long tentacles of the Camorra infecting every aspect of business from the port of Naples to the interior. Inland, cement cities house men and women who work long days in fashion sweatshops, where every aspect of life is controlled by the Camorra, from the lowliest waiter to the massive factories that produce counterfeit materials. Saviano begins this undercover journey at the port, where the great engine of Chinese business ingenuity gobbles opportunity, learning, adapting, growing, replacing. For every legal shipment of goods, there are shadow shipments headed toward a greedy market, an endless network of goods and services, a fusion of fashion and greed, the profit going to the quickest and the best.
This elaborate business network is also social, entire families in service on one level or another, women as well as men. Production never ceases, the workers hunkered down in their cement hives, creating goods, every phase of production strictly monitored for maximum profit. This expose is like a vast sea roiling with activity, collateral deaths absorbed by the whole, warring factions breaking out in bursts of gunfire from AK-47s, bodies scattered like so much refuse, expeditiously swept away so business as usual can resume. From the Port and the intricate partnerships of fashion and export to the cities where product is manufactured, ... Read More
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I'll admit that I learned of Roberto Saviano's Gomorrah not from a movie, or word of mouth on the quality of Saviano's writing but from the threats of death Saviano now has marked from the Cammora for writing the book. Thats an odd bit of advertisement for his work especially since Saviano's death threats are for breaking some code of silence. In threatening his death the Cammora gave Saviano his best publicity.
So how does the book rate outside of the award winning film or Saviano's sad fate? For one its a very detailed analysis starting at the port of Naples where supposedly all the worlds goods arrive on their way to the west. Through this has sprung up from the Cammora the sale of counterfeit goods using cheap inexpensive labor to make products under name labels. Saviano lays these details helped along by the Chinese who take products from the ships before they reach port. From there Saviano imparts a length of information pertaining to clan wars in a region called Secondigliano resulting from a boss who wanted to cinch up internal strife, and was said to be so violent the morturay van ran its tires bald to other elements including the use of the Kalishnikov asault rifle-to test their guns criminals fire into store windows and shutters not because of a vendetta but because they own the company supplying businesses plexi glass, to the role of women who are sometimes the most violent members of the clans. In the end He finishes with a role Hollywood plays into the image of ... Read More
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In going undercover, R. Saviano experienced at first hand the Mafia at work in the Naples region.
It is a story of savage infighting, bid-rigging, trafficking and relentless slaughtering of competition.
Economics
Mafia business is one of the most aggressive forms of neoliberalism. It is a naked struggle among clans in order to create monopolies and to maximize profits. Their activities cover as different sectors as real estate, construction, cement, garment, farming, sugar and trafficking of drugs, cigarettes, arms and waste. A clan cartel could generate as much as 30 billion euros of revenues per year.
The author also clearly explains the bidding contest for contracts in the garment industry, where small `illegal' factories with harsh working conditions are tailoring even unique pieces for the top names in the industry.
Ethics and creed
For the Mafia, ethics equal protection of the defeated. Justice and injustice have only significance as victory or defeat. The only thing that counts is the law of the strongest, are the means to rule.
Its members don't consider their activities as contradictory to the Christian message as long as those activities are good for the clan and its affiliates. Killing of enemies and traitors is seen as a legitimate transgression of the fifth commandment.
Lifestyle
Once in a commanding position, most bosses are confronted with the long arm of the law. They are always on the run and ... Read More
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