Book Summary and Reviews of Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano, translated by Virginia Jewiss

Reader Reviews

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Penny

Globalization at its Worst
Author Robert Svaiano worked undercover as an assistant to a Asian textile manufacturer to document how China is involved in the black market of Europe from high-end clothing to low-end junk.

He then collected evidence on the Camorra mob. A mob that technically owns Naples, Italy, especially its poor people.

The violence, the audacity, the subterfuge is as amazing as it is sickening. Toxic waste is dumped where it's feasible, not safe. Tags denoting where items are made mean nothing. Bribes can buy anything.

It's a book of horrors that surely involves far more places than Naples and makes any and all products we buy anywhere suspect.

An interesting read. Another condemnation of China. Also it looks at how the criminal element changes to meet new world challenges.

Beverly

A Living Hell
Roberto Saviano paints a brilliant, bloody portrait of his hometown Naples, Italy. Far from the lovely image the tourist bureau would have you believe, lies a dirty, corrupt, toxic, violent world controlled by organized crime whose reach extends throughout the world. Shocking!

Fred

gomorrah
I found Roberto Saviano's book a fasinating trip into the Camorra underworld.He writes almost poeticly in parts.Extremly riviting throughout. A book that can be read in one setting.

Mary

What a Ride!!
You've got to read Gomorrah! It's a book written with passion and elegantly translated into English. But, reader beware, the subject matter is the stuff of nightmares. Page after page is filled with images of sweatshops,drug trafficking, murder---and the Camorra's reach into legitimate society. It's poison has insinuated itself into the very fabric of Neapolitan society and further - into the reaches of Europe, the US and China. Saviano has done a great service to society by publishing this book. As a Neapolitan American two generations removed, I am indebted to the author for the courage he has shown in exposing the cancer afflicting the land of my ancestors. Grazie tanto, Saviano. Stay safe!

Nikki

A Walk on the Dark Side
It is not often that I render an audible gasp on the first page of a book.Gamorrah is not for the gentle souls among us. It is raw, brutally descriptive, and at the same time very informative.I thoroughly enjoyed it and can say this book will haunt my thoughts for sometime to come. If you want to walk on the dark side this is your book. Fabulous !!!

Bill

A feel-good mafia exposé?
The author gives an insider's view of a monstrous system that is all the more disquieting because you're in there with him. Besides the titillation of so much blood and excess, what kept me reading was the intelligence and heart in the work. The tone sounds raw and cynical but it isn't without occasional touches of poetry and sentimentalism. The author never stayed in one mode long enough to get tiresome. I was shocked by what this book had to say. I don't know if I was convinced by the litany of the names and places or if I just sympathized with a good writer. His heart's in the right place. I hope it's still beating somewhere.

...12 more reader reviews