Roberto Saviano: Writer in exile
When I tell some Italian friends I am going to interview Roberto Saviano, author of Gomorrah, the mouldbreaking book on Naples’ notorious Camorra crime syndicate that has meant he is now guarded round-theclock, I mention that I plan to ask him how he gets by, how he copes with having to plan every aspect of his life to the finest detail, only going outdoors with a squad of carabinieri to protect him from vengeful camorristi. In short, how does he live?
“He lives well,” my friends tell me knowingly. And here is part of the Saviano paradox. As a journalist, he has showed extraordinary defiance and courage in speaking out about some of the more bestial of his fellow Neapolitans. Gomorrah sold 10 million copies around the world after it appeared in 2006, becoming, surely, one of television’s most compelling series ever. It gave him, at just 25, the sort of profile and financial security beyond the dreams of most journalists, but also death threats, the need for his family to ef- fectively disappear and scant prospect of anything but the briefest of romantic liaisons. And now, evidently unfulfilled by crossing swords with some of Italy’s most unpleasant people, he has gone global with Zero Zero Zero, a book about the international cocaine trade.
“My mother always told me I was a bit of a one for getting into fixes, a bit dumb, restless and impulsive,” he admits when we meet in a chic London hotel. This time he is travelling light, seemingly with just one heavy. When he travels to Mexico, he has 10, in Italy, seven. He has twice asked the Italian authorities if it might be safe to lift the guard, but they say no. It has become a symbol of the Italian state’s willingness to take on organised crime, so in any case is unlikely to be dropped.
The son of a geochemist mother and a GP father, Saviano was brought up in Casal di Principe, on the outskirts of Naples, in a golden age of organised crime killing. He saw his first corpse at the age of 12 (“I remember it didn’t bother me … I felt grown up when I saw bodies”), but the rage was fired at the age of 16 when the local priest, Don Peppe Di- ana, pinned a notice on local churches bearing the words: “Because I love my people, I must stay quiet no longer.” Days later, he was shot in the face in his own church. Bad enough, but the local papers proceeded to smear the man, claiming the “playboy priest” was a camorrista himself, had been caught in bed with two women and so on. People seemed indifferent, says Saviano, still scandalised, so he started writing, his guiding principle — apart from his own ambition, he admits — being “this is why this story is important for you”.
A degree of early success led him to Gomorrah, the book that changed everything, for good and bad. “I know the heroic answer is to say I would write the same book again, but I wouldn’t, or at least not in the same way.” A life of confinement, of having to plan everything at least three days in advance, as he has for nine years, is weighing on him. He has spent extended periods in the United States, Sweden, Rome and the idyllic tiny island of Filicudi, at a time when there were countless Camorra hitmen on the loose. He has had trouble sleeping, suffers from agoraphobia, can only with the greatest difficulty, say, go out for a pizza, and feels a permanent tension inside himself, compounded by what he has inflicted on his family. His mother and brother moved away from his home area. “They are sweet and don’t go on about it,” he says, “but this is my great guilt. For me, it is a job, but they have to live it, the danger, the jokes ....”
Intriguingly, he talks of how Salman Rushdie and other international fugitives (such as Mexican journalist Lydia Cacho and Iranian women’s rights campaigner Shirin Ebadi) call one another to ask for and offer advice about safe places to go and how to cope. Rushdie told him some supporters won’t be happy till he’s dead. “He said they love you because you are a martyr, but if you don’t die, it’s as if you are betraying them. He also said that you free yourself from the inside, by getting rid of guilt … and then he said there is one thing you must do to win — you must party!” That will have to wait. He remains a long way short of self-pity, and talks of the absurdity of feeling, as he did initially, that somehow the world owed him. “I’m very privileged,” he says, acknowledging he is a prisoner also of his topic, but that many have been killed and imprisoned for their work “and I’m still here!”.
Writing Zero Zero Zero, which, amid the encyclopaedia of human tales contains numerous episodes of appalling cold-bloodedness from around the world, seems to reflect the bug he can’t shake. “It’s as if I’m saying ‘here I am, you haven’t beaten me’.” And off he goes, talking with compelling urgency about what a great drug cocaine is for criminals (he has never tried it). “If I gave you a bag of diamonds, it would be almost impossible for you to sell it,” he says excitedly. “But if I gave you a bag of cocaine, you could probably sell the contents before you leave this hotel.” THE INDEPENDENT
The son of a geochemist mother and a GP father, Saviano was brought up in Casal di Principe, on the outskirts of Naples, in a golden age of organised crime killing. He saw his first corpse at the age of 12.