Roberto Saviano's Gomorrah is brilliant, gripping, heartbreaking, and very well-written (which means the translator must have done an ace job.) It's about living in a culture and economy (the area around Naples) which has been completely taken over by the Camorra, the mob. It's not glamorous. It ain't the Godfather, although a lot of mobsters model themselves on that and Scarface. Like In Cold Blood, it moves back and forth between genres: memoir, reporting, philosophy...
There's more to it than voyeurism, though. It's not a book about "let's see how the sexy evil people operate", far less "Aren't you glad you don't live here??" It's about what a completely corrupted economy looks like, about how much of the world's economy is funnelling through Naples, and about what the consequences are for the community.
I've been grabbing people's lapels and saying "You must read Gomorrah!" for a month now.
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Date: 2009-02-24 08:01 pm (UTC)There's more to it than voyeurism, though. It's not a book about "let's see how the sexy evil people operate", far less "Aren't you glad you don't live here??" It's about what a completely corrupted economy looks like, about how much of the world's economy is funnelling through Naples, and about what the consequences are for the community.
I've been grabbing people's lapels and saying "You must read Gomorrah!" for a month now.