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algarrobita's review against another edition
4.0
La realidad supera una vez más la ficción. Sin el romanticismo con el que se ha contado la historia de la mafia en los últimos años. Saviano te lleva, sin anestesia, a conocer a la "esposa infiel" que le duele a toda Italia: la camorra.
Y la razón que lo impulsó a escribir el libro: "Ponerse en contra de los clanes se convierte en una guerra por la supervivencia, como si la propia existencia [...]Saber, entender, se convierte en una necesidad. La única posible para considerarse aún hombres dignos de respirar.
El glamour de los mafiosos, perpetruado en varias películas, es solo una vez en un millón de oportunidades para un boss, un "padrino" o como debería decirse un "compadre" (compariello). Ser Camorrista es saber que la vida propia solo es un medio donde pasa el poder, que la muerte te acompaña desde la mañana a la noche (como diría Pavese) y que la inmortalidad se consigue a través de los negocios.
En fin, otra vida que a pesar de tener su propio encanto jamás será rentable para la industria de Hollywood.
astridhealy's review
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.75
Très intéressant, un écrit courageux et nécessaire. A tad bit long.
voorbijdekim's review against another edition
3.0
Zeer interessant onderwerp. Leest echter niet heel prettig. Het is een serie anekdotes met honderden namen (en bijnamen) die ik alweer allemaal vergeten ben. Boek is ingedeeld in thema, waardoor je soms dezelfde personen tegenkomt en soms personen die slechts 1 paragraaf krijgen. De persoonlijke verhalen van de schrijver zijn boeiend om te lezen, maar te weinig om van toegevoegde waarde te zijn. Vanwege het onderwerp toch een extra ster. Voor 'Italofielen' een aanrader, voor anderen wel ok.
cinnamon82's review
God, was this a tough one to get through. But then, it was not at all meant to be an easy read, the opposite, rather; this book is an exposure of the Camorra, the mafia of Naples: one of the oldest and largest criminal organisations in the world. Unlike the Sicilian mafia, the Camorra are a bunch of separate clans that operate as ’The System’, held together by tenuous alliances and the common interest of crime and capitalism. Capitalism distilled to its purest evil form: anything and everything is permissible for the furthering of busines. Murder, torture, blackmail, bribery, extortion, racketeering, this book is replete with horrors of every sort, and the recounting of brutal end that meets anyone who is suspected to be antagonistic, or who dares oppose them, or who simply happened to be in the way. Even children. An unending nightmare.
I cannot imagine what lengths the author, a journalist working undercover in his native city, has gone to for this compilation.
His personal anecdotes make for good reading, but the book at times diverts into lists upon lists of names and places that mean little to someone unfamiliar with the background.
The message gets through, however. The Camorra‘s tenure is brutal, their reach is extensive; their insidious presence can be found not only in the usual (and expected) narcotics trade, but also in high-end fashion, cement, weapons, plastics, waste disposal, even milk. Milk?!!
It’s hard to look at the world in the same way again. This is an important book and a must-read for anyone interested in economics, politics, or the workings of organised crime.
I cannot imagine what lengths the author, a journalist working undercover in his native city, has gone to for this compilation.
His personal anecdotes make for good reading, but the book at times diverts into lists upon lists of names and places that mean little to someone unfamiliar with the background.
The message gets through, however. The Camorra‘s tenure is brutal, their reach is extensive; their insidious presence can be found not only in the usual (and expected) narcotics trade, but also in high-end fashion, cement, weapons, plastics, waste disposal, even milk. Milk?!!
It’s hard to look at the world in the same way again. This is an important book and a must-read for anyone interested in economics, politics, or the workings of organised crime.
ph230's review against another edition
5.0
I knew very little about the camorra, only a few clichés seen in movies and so.
It's really impressing everything is tangled with the system. You can't realise. This book should be read in schools.
It's a bit strange to see your own name (twice) in such a book ^^
It's really impressing everything is tangled with the system. You can't realise. This book should be read in schools.
It's a bit strange to see your own name (twice) in such a book ^^
pucca182's review against another edition
5.0
A bordo della sua vespa, Saviano ci guida nell’impero economico della camorra, facendoci scoprire i meccanismi del “Sistema”.
Partendo dal porto di Napoli, punto di passaggio per tutto quello che è prodotto in Oriente, scopriremo tutti i settori dove la camorra ha investito a livello mondiale, quali il tessile, la droga, le armi, il cemento e, infine, i rifiuti.
Leggendo questo libro si comprendono: ingranaggi, struttura e organizzazione dei clan, i cui capi si considerano degli imprenditori, bramosi di soldi, fama e rispetto e senza pietà per alcuno, uccidendo, sfruttando e avvelenando la loro stessa terra con i rifiuti tossici.
Saviano ha uno stile fluido e scorrevole che ti cattura, travolge dall’inizio alla fine, ti colpisce nell’anima. La storia è un complesso di fatti, dati e nomi, ma anche e soprattutto di rabbia, dolore e amore per la propria terra natia; una denuncia per portare all’attenzione del maggior numero di persone possibili i problemi che riguardano l’intera l’Italia e non solo il Sud.
Una delle cose che più mi ha colpito è come la morte sia sempre presente in ogni capitolo: basta pensare che in 26 anni la camorra ha ucciso 3600 persone.
Dopo questa lettura, non sono più in grado di guardare il mio Paese con gli stessi occhi di prima.
Partendo dal porto di Napoli, punto di passaggio per tutto quello che è prodotto in Oriente, scopriremo tutti i settori dove la camorra ha investito a livello mondiale, quali il tessile, la droga, le armi, il cemento e, infine, i rifiuti.
Leggendo questo libro si comprendono: ingranaggi, struttura e organizzazione dei clan, i cui capi si considerano degli imprenditori, bramosi di soldi, fama e rispetto e senza pietà per alcuno, uccidendo, sfruttando e avvelenando la loro stessa terra con i rifiuti tossici.
Saviano ha uno stile fluido e scorrevole che ti cattura, travolge dall’inizio alla fine, ti colpisce nell’anima. La storia è un complesso di fatti, dati e nomi, ma anche e soprattutto di rabbia, dolore e amore per la propria terra natia; una denuncia per portare all’attenzione del maggior numero di persone possibili i problemi che riguardano l’intera l’Italia e non solo il Sud.
Una delle cose che più mi ha colpito è come la morte sia sempre presente in ogni capitolo: basta pensare che in 26 anni la camorra ha ucciso 3600 persone.
Dopo questa lettura, non sono più in grado di guardare il mio Paese con gli stessi occhi di prima.
tbr_the_unconquered's review
4.0
Approximately 18 years ago and in a second hand bookshop at Coimbatore, I first chanced across Mario Puzo’s The Godfather. All that I knew about the book then was that it had something to do with the criminal underworld and its people. When I started reading it the first time, it all felt like one big let-down for me since there was not enough action in the first few chapters and pages and there were long, long deviations into stories of unimportant characters. I gave up ! A couple of years later I began re-reading the story and got totally enamoured with the character of Michael Corleone and came to a conclusion that this was how an underworld don should ideally be. Calm and rational on the one hand and yet deadly on the other and if I were to borrow Puzo’s own usage, Michael Corleone held the power of imperium over his fellow human beings.
Why I went into this long rant was to tell myself as to how mistaken I was in my understanding of the Mafia and how effective Mario Puzo was in concocting a fictional American Mafia story. The stories of the Italian cartels that Roberto Saviano talks about in his book is an antithesis to how much popular fiction has romanticized the criminal underworld. What Saviano talks about is equating the Italian Mafia to an octopus whose many tentacles wrap around and suffocate every aspect of life on the land. You can either be with the octopus or against it for there is no middle ground when it comes to the cartels. Gomorrah is a brutal account of a brutal business populated by unbelievably ruthless characters who are all real !
In the lands of the Camorrah, the organized crime network there are no innocents. Every gender, age group and type of person has a role to play when it comes to the Camorrah. For the boys, the life of a Mafiosi is a life of pride and power and for the girls it is about falling in love with a guy from the clans to ensure financial stability for life. The men and women of the cartels are locked in a perpetual struggle to find their way to the top of the pyramid while the old and the infirm sometimes become the messengers for the clans. Saviano makes it very clear right from the start of his book that the power of these networks stems more from the economic discipline than from the military might. The Camorrah has their fingers in all the tasty pies : shipping, retail, apparels, construction, waste disposal, politics, immigration and to something even as domestic as milk distribution. In short not a leaf trembles in the wind without the approval of these networks. Saviano does quote some annual turnover figures of the top chieftains in the business and some of these numbers (which is just from one arm of their business) would be worth the GDP of a few small nations combined together. This might and money comes at a heavy price though : a life of total isolation. A powerful mafia chief always has to stay one step ahead of the law and order and several steps ahead of the competition. One wrong move is equivalent to a life time in prison or an entire shower of bullets and hence outthinking one’s rivals is the order of any given day.
A state within a state is a clichéd usage and yet I cannot think of any better way to define the Camorrah mafia. What else can one call an organization who has full coffers and who runs like a well-oiled machine ? An organization whose military might once mobilized can lay waste entire swathes of territory, what do you call them ? The Mafia seems to be a way of life to this land and the choices it leaves the people with are very limited for a peaceful life. The price that Roberto Saviano paid for writing this book was also very high for he still lives under armed police protection. A price he chose to pay for breaking the sacred rule of omerta.
This is a disturbing albeit incredibly powerful book. Highly recommended !
Why I went into this long rant was to tell myself as to how mistaken I was in my understanding of the Mafia and how effective Mario Puzo was in concocting a fictional American Mafia story. The stories of the Italian cartels that Roberto Saviano talks about in his book is an antithesis to how much popular fiction has romanticized the criminal underworld. What Saviano talks about is equating the Italian Mafia to an octopus whose many tentacles wrap around and suffocate every aspect of life on the land. You can either be with the octopus or against it for there is no middle ground when it comes to the cartels. Gomorrah is a brutal account of a brutal business populated by unbelievably ruthless characters who are all real !
In the lands of the Camorrah, the organized crime network there are no innocents. Every gender, age group and type of person has a role to play when it comes to the Camorrah. For the boys, the life of a Mafiosi is a life of pride and power and for the girls it is about falling in love with a guy from the clans to ensure financial stability for life. The men and women of the cartels are locked in a perpetual struggle to find their way to the top of the pyramid while the old and the infirm sometimes become the messengers for the clans. Saviano makes it very clear right from the start of his book that the power of these networks stems more from the economic discipline than from the military might. The Camorrah has their fingers in all the tasty pies : shipping, retail, apparels, construction, waste disposal, politics, immigration and to something even as domestic as milk distribution. In short not a leaf trembles in the wind without the approval of these networks. Saviano does quote some annual turnover figures of the top chieftains in the business and some of these numbers (which is just from one arm of their business) would be worth the GDP of a few small nations combined together. This might and money comes at a heavy price though : a life of total isolation. A powerful mafia chief always has to stay one step ahead of the law and order and several steps ahead of the competition. One wrong move is equivalent to a life time in prison or an entire shower of bullets and hence outthinking one’s rivals is the order of any given day.
A state within a state is a clichéd usage and yet I cannot think of any better way to define the Camorrah mafia. What else can one call an organization who has full coffers and who runs like a well-oiled machine ? An organization whose military might once mobilized can lay waste entire swathes of territory, what do you call them ? The Mafia seems to be a way of life to this land and the choices it leaves the people with are very limited for a peaceful life. The price that Roberto Saviano paid for writing this book was also very high for he still lives under armed police protection. A price he chose to pay for breaking the sacred rule of omerta.
This is a disturbing albeit incredibly powerful book. Highly recommended !
katenetz's review
4.0
This took me a long time to read because Saviano doesn't like to use paragraphs and the thousands of Italian names were incredibly difficult to distinguish from one another. But the overall effect of the book was completely devastating. The scope, breadth, and depth of organized crime in the world is truly unbelievable. The mob runs the southern Italian dairy industry, for heaven's sake. Toxic masculinity, systematic poverty, corrupt political systems, and a strangely perverted morality. Eye-opening, paradigm-crushing, depressing, and yet so so compelling.