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3.72 AVERAGE
3.72 AVERAGE
Vorrei davvero avere un voto di mezzo... una stellina supplementare perché dire "così così" è dire davvero poco ma dire "bello" non mi pare il caso, l'ho trovato CARINO.
La storia ovviamente è interessante, è quella che è, piatta e cruda, è la verità e per questo bisogna ringraziare Saviano perché solo un Napoletano che ci è cresciuto dentro può raccontarti cos'è la Camorra a te che di Camorra ne hai solo sentito parlare al telegiornale e in qualche fiction o telefilm.
Ho iniziato a leggere questo libro con tutto l'amore possibile ma spesso mi sono spenta e mi sono ritrovata ad esclamare davvero tante volte "che pizza".
Purtroppo Saviano non riesce a distaccarsi dal suo essere giornalista e quindi usa lo stesso stile per scrivere il romanzo ma lo stile giornalistico alla lunga diviene davvero pesante e spesso è incappato nell'errore di essere troppo specifico.
Capisco l'autore nel volere spiegare tutto il marcio della camorra ma pagine intere fatte solo di nomi o lunghi capitoli sulla ripetizione di un concetto sono, secondo me, superflui, le prime perché finito il libro nessuno se le ricorderà, il secondo perché una volta espresso il concetto non c'è bisogno di ripeterlo per un intero capitolo in mille modi diversi.
Ad ogni modo è un libro che tutti dovrebbero leggere, soprattutto chi ancora non crede alla sua esistenza e chi si crogiola nella convinzione di essere lontano da quel mondo solo perché ci vive lontano.
La storia ovviamente è interessante, è quella che è, piatta e cruda, è la verità e per questo bisogna ringraziare Saviano perché solo un Napoletano che ci è cresciuto dentro può raccontarti cos'è la Camorra a te che di Camorra ne hai solo sentito parlare al telegiornale e in qualche fiction o telefilm.
Ho iniziato a leggere questo libro con tutto l'amore possibile ma spesso mi sono spenta e mi sono ritrovata ad esclamare davvero tante volte "che pizza".
Purtroppo Saviano non riesce a distaccarsi dal suo essere giornalista e quindi usa lo stesso stile per scrivere il romanzo ma lo stile giornalistico alla lunga diviene davvero pesante e spesso è incappato nell'errore di essere troppo specifico.
Capisco l'autore nel volere spiegare tutto il marcio della camorra ma pagine intere fatte solo di nomi o lunghi capitoli sulla ripetizione di un concetto sono, secondo me, superflui, le prime perché finito il libro nessuno se le ricorderà, il secondo perché una volta espresso il concetto non c'è bisogno di ripeterlo per un intero capitolo in mille modi diversi.
Ad ogni modo è un libro che tutti dovrebbero leggere, soprattutto chi ancora non crede alla sua esistenza e chi si crogiola nella convinzione di essere lontano da quel mondo solo perché ci vive lontano.
dark
informative
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Gomorrah--it rhymes with Camorra, the Neapolitan-based clannish crime syndicate which hosts the Apocalypse in Southern Italy, all in the name of unchecked profits. This book is slow, particularly in the sections outlining the Secondigliano War where the names, the murders, the betrayals, the pentitos turn into a blur. I picked up this book as a companion to Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet to get some background on what the characters of that book, mostly Lila, are trying to avoid and which the Solaras personify. Instead I was treated to a feast of events and histories which will be unfamiliar to most Americans. But that's OK, they do love our gangster movies almost as their Kalashnikov rifles.
Wow...ist erstmal alles, was ich so kurz nach dem Zu-Ende-Lesen denken konnte. Das Buch ist wirklich schockierend. Ich hätte mir nie vorstellen können, dass die Camorra so weitreichend agiert. Noch dazu, da ich Mafia immer mit Sizilien und dem "Paten" in Verbindung gebracht habe. In Hollywood wirkt die Mafia immer irgendwie melancholisch-romantisch, Roberto Savianos Berichte sind das komplette Gegenteil: sachliche und doch mitreißende Zeugnisse der Brutalität, der Verwobenheit und der immensen wirtschaftlichen, militärischen und politischen Macht der Camorra (selbst wenn einige Camorristen gerne die Hollywoodklischees ausfüllen mochten). Am schockierendsten war es zu lesen, dass sie sogar in meiner Studienstadt, aktiv war/ist!
Alles in allem ein sehr packendes, ungeschöntes und interessantes Buch, das ich aber auch an einigen Stellen durch die Vielzahl an Namen und Orten verwirrend fand. Man konnte sich aber relativ schnell wieder hineinfitzen.
Alles in allem ein sehr packendes, ungeschöntes und interessantes Buch, das ich aber auch an einigen Stellen durch die Vielzahl an Namen und Orten verwirrend fand. Man konnte sich aber relativ schnell wieder hineinfitzen.
for the strong of stomach. fairly relentless, but authentic.
fascinating, yet sober and ruthless, analysis of a growing criminal organization that doubles as the perfect capitalist business. More insidious and pervasive than the Mafia, the Camora seems to have mutated crime from the early, romantic days of Don Corleone and Lucky Luciano.
Powerful reporting on piece of organized crime relatively unknown in US. Awkwardly written, or maybe poorly translated, but interesting.
A horrifying revelation of the role of crime in modern southern Italy. However, I really struggled with the writing style (albeit, in translation) and the scattergun way of telling the tale.
Things are not good when reviewing the metadata on one’s music collection too often proved more attractive than picking up this book for its next chapter.
Things are not good when reviewing the metadata on one’s music collection too often proved more attractive than picking up this book for its next chapter.
This is a journalistic account of organised crime in Naples; the title is a pun on Camorra, the name of the Neapolitan mafia. It’s an eye-opening, depressing book. The prose is occasionally a little purple for my taste, which I suspect is partly the translation. And I feel a bit petty criticising the prose style since Saviano risked his life to write it; he now lives under 24 hour police protection. I can only hope his bravery does some good, although the book makes the problem seem intractable.
I realised it would feature unpleasant people doing unpleasant things — I’m not a complete idiot, I saw Goodfellas — but I thought that the movies might tend to exaggerate it, since violence is so cinematic. But actually the brutality is genuinely shocking: there are page after page of murders and beatings.
Also shocking is the sheer scale of their involvement not just in clearly illegal activities like drugs, people trafficking and gun running, but in superficially legitimate businesses: fashion, construction, waste disposal. I guess it makes sense; a willingness to ignore the law can be a great competitive advantage. It’s easier to make money from imported consumer goods if you don’t pay any import duties or taxes; from clothing if it’s made in an illegal sweatshop; from waste disposal if you don’t even try to dispose of toxic waste safely.
The details of life at street level, and the mechanics of things like the waste disposal trade, are the most interesting parts of it; some of the stuff where he is detailing the feuds between different groups is less gripping, just because it’s difficult trying to keep track of all the different names and the list of murders gets depressingly repetitive. But overall it is fascinating stuff and I certainly recommend it.
I realised it would feature unpleasant people doing unpleasant things — I’m not a complete idiot, I saw Goodfellas — but I thought that the movies might tend to exaggerate it, since violence is so cinematic. But actually the brutality is genuinely shocking: there are page after page of murders and beatings.
As a young doctor in the 1980s my father had worked on an ambulance crew. Four hundred deaths a year. In areas with up to five murders a day. They’d pull up in the ambulance, the wounded on the ground, but if the police hadn’t arrived, they couldn’t load him onto the stretcher. Because if word got around, the killers would come back and track down the ambulance, stop it, climb in, and finish off the job. It had happened lots of times, so the doctors and nurses knew to stand by, to wait till the killers came back to complete the operation.
Also shocking is the sheer scale of their involvement not just in clearly illegal activities like drugs, people trafficking and gun running, but in superficially legitimate businesses: fashion, construction, waste disposal. I guess it makes sense; a willingness to ignore the law can be a great competitive advantage. It’s easier to make money from imported consumer goods if you don’t pay any import duties or taxes; from clothing if it’s made in an illegal sweatshop; from waste disposal if you don’t even try to dispose of toxic waste safely.
The Casalesi have distributed their good throughout the region. Just the real estate assets seized by the Naples DDA in the last few years amount to 750 million euros. The lists are frightening. In the Spartacus trial alone, 199 buildings, 52 pieces of property, 14 companies, 12 automobiles, and 3 boats were confiscated. Over the years, according to a 1996 trial, Schiavone and his trusted men have seen the seizure of assets worth 230 million euros: companies, villas, lands, buildings, and powerful automobiles, including the Jaguar in which Sandokan was found at the time of his first arrest. Confiscations that would have destroyed any company, losses that would have ruined any businessman, economic blows that would have capsized any firm. Anyone but the Casalesi cartel. Every time I read about the seizure of property, every time I see the lists of assets the DDA has confiscated from the bosses, I feel depressed and exhausted; everywhere I turn, everything sems to be theirs. Everything. Land, buffalos, farms, quarries, garages, dairies, hotels, and restaurants. A sort of Camorra omnipotence. I can’t see anything that doesn’t belong to them.
The details of life at street level, and the mechanics of things like the waste disposal trade, are the most interesting parts of it; some of the stuff where he is detailing the feuds between different groups is less gripping, just because it’s difficult trying to keep track of all the different names and the list of murders gets depressingly repetitive. But overall it is fascinating stuff and I certainly recommend it.
Super interesting but not a book to read if you're just casually, passively interested in the subject. The writing, however, was very passionate and theatrical and it really set the scene every time something big happened (which did, indeed, happen in this nonfictional account). So while there was a huge load of information coming my way, it was fed to me in this really dramatic manner which made it completely bearable. Also, some of the stuff he talks about going down in Naples was CRAZY--it makes American "mafia" ideas seem tame in comparison.