The writer himself is currently taking a break away from the Naples region

The writer himself is currently taking “a break” away from the Naples region. “Only a stay of a few weeks,” reports L’Espresso, “to relieve the pressure and concentrate on new projects.”But how long it will be before Saviano can breathe easy again is anybody’s guess.A Vespa ride through ‘the pusher’s piazza’From “The War of Secondigliano”, chapter three of Gomorra: “I had been hanging out in Secondigliano for some time. Since he gave up working as a tailor, Pasquale (a friend) kept me up to date with the buzz in the area, a place that was changing at blinding speed…I used to cruise around the area north of Naples on my Vespa I liked the light in Secondigliano and Scampia. The streets were huge and wide, airy compared to the tangle in the centre of Naples.. it was like being in the open country… Scampia was the rotten symbol of the architectural delirium (of the Sixties), or perhaps more simply a utopia of cement which was able to put nothing in the way of construction of the machine of the drug trade that wore down the social fabric of this part of the earth.Chronic unemployment and a total absence of plans for social growth turned this into a place capable of storing tons of drugs, and a laboratory for laundering dirty money into legal commercial activity… What’s required is a public intervention by the state.”Yesterday the Prefect of Caserta answered that appeal by granting Saviano a bodyguard. On Sunday the great Umberto Eco, author of The Name of the Rose, went on national TV news to appeal for Saviona’s protection.

“We must not leave Saviano alone like Falcone and Borsellino,” he said. “In this case, appeals to writers for solidarity are of no use… We know where the threats are coming from, we know the Christian and surnames of those who are making them. The first was the celebrated writer Enzo Siciliano, who just before he died said: “Let’s remember that this is not just a good book; this lad’s life is at risk, too.”As word of the threats spread, a supportive blog was launched. The preparation consists of rendering their victim weak, friendless and alone. It was the strategy followed in the assassination of the Sicilian magistrates Falcone and Borsellino, and many others. Saviano’s enemies seem to have been following a similar script themselves.Now Saviano’s friends have started to declare themselves.

The Interior Ministry is putting in place a plan to restore public order in Campania, and there is a reawakening of resistance among the civilian population. While everybody has been looking at Naples and the outskirts, the book has put under the eyes of everyone the economic and military power of the clans of Caserta,” the area at the heart of Gomorra.When Italy’s criminal gangs, which are always in league with powers deep inside the bureaucracy and the government, decide to eliminate an enemy, they do not strike without due preparation. “Iovine, Schiavone, Zagaria,” he told the crowd, naming the local Camorra bosses, “are worth nothing. Their power is founded on your fear, they must clear out of this land.” It was a moment of great courage – and recklessness.Nothing went amiss for Saviano that day. But the local newspaper, the Corriere di Caserta, put a striking spin on the story.

In their report they noted that none of the city’s MPs had shown up for the meeting. They also reported that a cousin of “Sandokan”, another of the gang leaders named by Saviona, “pinned one man to the wall with his ferocious stare and made him say, one by one, who was applauding too enthusiastically.” The report went on to say that “not everyone was impressed by the invective of Saviona”. The small change of local press reporting, one might think – except for the fact that the newspaper’s editor is soon to go on trial accused of blackmail.As Saviona’s book makes clear, to live in these badlands and not come to terms with the gangs who rule them is to put one’s life at risk. And Saviona has not only made it very clear that he is deeply opposed to the gangs; his work has already had an effect.According to L’Espresso, the magazine that has published much of his work, “Gomorra .. has forced the state to act.

But the moment that Saviano realised his life was at risk came as a weird counterpoint to his new fame and prominence.On 23 September a campaign conducted by the Ministry of Justice against the Naples gangs was wrapped up with a public meeting in Casal di Principe, a tough suburb of Naples, addressed by Saviano The author did not mince his words. “Saviano,” she said, “is a symbol of the Naples that he denounces.”Clearly the temperature was rising. When Rosa Rossa Iervolino, the Mayor of Naples, awarded him a prize for the book, she gave him a slap in the face with a barbed comment. And this is what Roberto Saviano now fears.His crime, in the eyes of the gangs, is to have published a book, Gomorra (a word play on Camorra, and a reference to the disastrously lawless situation of Naples) that digs deep inside the gangsters’ world, naming names, spelling out criminal structures and their ways of working, drawing a detailed picture of a city which, in his analysis, has largely surrendered to the criminals.Gomorra was published by Mondadori, one of Italy’s top publishers, six months ago and has been on the best-seller list for five months: sales now top 100,000. The threats began as a subtle murmur in the background of daily life: the phone that went dead when he picked it up, waiters in local restaurants who told him, “You’re not welcome here,” shopkeepers who whispered in a pleading tone, “Must you really keep on buying your bread at this shop?”.Then there was the gesture of rejection by the top elected official in the city.