Roberto Saviano

For four weeks from October 4, 2017 Saviano hosted the show Kings of Crime on the TV channel Nove, where he spoke of the major Italian and international bosses of the organized crime system.

In 2016, filming, under the same directors and producers, of the adaptation of ZeroZeroZero, another monograph by Saviano published in Italian in 2013, began.

In 2015, Roberto Saviano collaborated with the Neapolitan playwright Mimmo Borrelli in the play Sanghenapule – Vita straordinaria di San Gennaro, which was part of the 2015/2016 season of the Piccolo Teatro of Milan.

In September 2015, journalist Michael C. Moynihan wrote an article for The Daily Beast, criticizing ZeroZeroZero and accusing Saviano of having used sections of text, including from Wikipedia, without citing his sources. In an article for the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Saviano demonstrated how the passages from ZeroZeroZero and the presumed sources identified by Moynihan were manipulated in order to appear similar. The English newspaper The Guardian reported on the controversy with an article entitled "Roberto Saviano dismisses plagiarism claims over latest book" in which Saviano says, "I'm not a journalist (or a reporter), but, rather, a writer, and I recount real facts." Saviano adds that "Interpretations and theories have a provenance, not mere facts: those belong to all, to those who recount them and to those who read them, making them their own".

Among the various public personalities who have expressed their support of Roberto Saviano (Fabio Fazio, Chiara Valerio, Francesca Borri, Stefano Piedimonte), the then editor in chief of La Repubblica, Ezio Mauro, appeared in a video on the paper's website on September 28, 2015, to give his contribution to the "Saviano case." He repeated that "the facts of the news are available to all" and spoke about the "typical iconoclasm toward famous people who have constructed success and visibility based on their own hard work and studies." He continued by saying, "Saviano is paying for having an enormous following and, above all, for the fact that he hasn't remained comfortably in cultural obscurity".

Later on, a television show titled Gomorrah was produced by Sky Italia, Fandango, Cattleya, Beta Film and LA7, under the supervision of Saviano and the direction of Stefano Sollima (previously the director of the acclaimed series Romanzo criminale), Francesca Comencini, and Claudio Cupellini. The series, composed of twelve episodes, aired on the channel Sky Atlantica starting on May 6, 2014, and was then broadcast on Rai 3 on Saturdays in the late evening in January and February 2015. After the first season's success, production for the second season was announced; filming began in April 2015.

The structure of the fictionalized essay (or the novel-essay or the investigative novel or the nonfiction novel) is nothing new, and was already used in narratives of denunciation in the nineteenth century. To give an example from the Neapolitan context, Francesco Mastriani—prolific Neapolitan storyteller of so-called low Romanticism—successfully experimented with the structure in his serial novels. His growing success, his increasingly direct relationship with readers, and the end of Bourbon rule and censorship led him to use a more objective narrative in the style of news reporting that was taken from the environments of sordid characters and criminals (the dangerous classes). Specifically, Mastriani methodically described and classified the criminal society of his time, as well as the problems of Naples and the South, giving rise to the Southern Question. The writer defined these works studies in the same narrative thread that was then in vogue in novels from European metropolises across the Alps and the Channel. Morbid curiosity and a chronic thirst for truth among readers caused such novels to become bestsellers. In I vermi (or The Worms about "social worms"), Mastriani examines, among others, The Elegant Camorra, The Vagabonds and The Forced Labor. As Benedetto Croce noted, Mastriani was widely read by the Neapolitan populace outside of the "learned and cultured" circles.

I believe I have the right to a break. Over the years I have thought that giving in to the temptation to retreat was neither a very good idea nor, above all, an intelligent one. I believed that it was rather stupid—in additional to being improper—to give up, to bend to men who are nothing, people whom you abhor for what they think, for how they act, for how they live, and for their very being. But, in this moment, I don't see any reason why I should insist on living in this way, as a prisoner of myself, of my book, of my success. Fuck success. I want a life. That's it. I want a house. I want to fall in love, to drink a beer in public, to go to a bookstore and to choose a book by reading the cover. I want to go for a stroll, to sunbathe, to walk under the rain, to meet people without fear and without frightening my mother. I want to be surrounded by my friends, to be able to laugh, and to not have to talk about myself, always about myself as though I were terminally ill and they were struggling with a boring, yet inevitable, visit. Damn it, I'm only twenty-eight years old! And I still want to write, write, write because it's my passion and my resistance. And in order to write, I need to plunge my hands into reality, to cover myself in it, to smell its odor and its sweat, and to not live quarantined in a hyperbolic chamber inside military barracks—today here, tomorrow two hundred kilometers away, moved like a package without knowing what happened and what can happen. A perennial state of bewilderment and insecurity keeps me from thinking, reflecting, concentrating on what I have to do. Sometimes I surprise myself thinking these words: I want my life back. I silently repeat them, one by one, to myself.

The appeal was signed by writers such as Jonathan Franzen, Javier Marías, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jonathan Lethem, Martin Amis, Chuck Palahniuk, Nathan Englander, Ian McEwan, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, José Saramago, Elfriede Jelinek, Wislawa Szymborska, Betty Williams, Lech Wałęsa, Paul Auster, Siri Hustvedt, Peter Schneider, Colum McCann, Patrick McGrath, Cathleen Shine, Junot Diaz, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Taslima Nasreen, Caro Llewelyn, Ingrid Betancourt, Adam Michnik and Claudio Magris. Foreign media—from El País to Le Nouvel Observateur and from Courrier International to Al Arabiya and CNN—also spread the initiative.

On May 19, 2014, Pisani, testifying during the trial of the Casalesi bosses and their lawyers, who had used an istanza di remissione to threaten Saviano and others in the courtroom, renounced the headline of the interview that he had given to the Corriere della Sera in 2009: Saviano should not have bodyguards. "I don't agree with the headline of that article," Pisani declared to the judges. He also clarified the content of the investigation his team had conducted on the threats to Saviano: "We investigated and showed some photos to Saviano, who, however, did not identify them as the people who had threatened him. The decision to assign a security detail was obviously not up to us. Pisani, therefore, explained that he did not say the words pronounced in the article since the Carabinieri (Italy's national military police) were the ones who had to make the decision concerning Saviano's security detail.

These along with other declarations caused controversy and were criticized for having ignored the injustices suffered by the Palestinian population. The activist Vittorio Arrigoni responded to Saviano's affirmations through a video, inviting him to revise his opinions and to define Shimon Peres—commended by Saviano—as a "war criminal."

"And at Casamicciola the son of Comm. Croce was dug out alive. He is the only survivor of the rich family from Foggia, which has been settled in Naples for a long time. He recounted that his mother and sister were found among the rubble and passed away. His father, who was writing with his son at the table when the quake struck, was completely covered by debris except for his head and told him – Offer 100 thousand lire to whoever can save us. – And then his voice could no longer be heard and he was completely buried. The young Croce had a fractured arm and leg."

In 2013 Saviano and the Arnoldo Mondadori Editore publishing house were sentenced for plagiarism on appeal. The Appeals Court of Naples recognized that some pages of Gomorrah (0.6% of the entire book) were the results of an illicit reproduction of some lines from two articles from local daily papers, Cronache di Napoli and Corriere di Caserta. Therefore, it partially modified the sentence from the first-degree court in which the court had rejected the accusations made by the two newspapers and had, instead, condemned them to pay damages for having "abusively reproduced" two of Saviano's articles (this sentence was confirmed in the appeal). In the appeal, the writer and Mondadori were ordered to jointly pay reparations for property and other damages of 60 thousand euros plus a portion of legal costs. The writer appealed the ruling at the Court of Cassation, and the Supreme Court partially confirmed the sentence of the Appeals Court, but called for a reconsideration of the damages, evaluating 60 thousand euros to be an excessive sum for newspaper articles with a very limited readership. The Supreme Court did not agree with Saviano's appeal, rejecting almost all of the findings and largely confirming the basic structure of the Appeals Court's sentence.[1]

November 8–29, 2010, Roberto Saviano hosted the cultural program Vieni via con me (Come Away with Me) with Fabio Fazio on Rai 3. The program had very successful ratings: the third episode was seen by 9,671,000 viewers, or 31.6% of the television audience that evening. The show covered themes such as organized crime (not only the Camorra), immigration, women's emancipation, politics, and serious problems in Italian society. The program typically features the reading of "lists" with the goal of highlighting the issues addressed through a series of data. Numerous special guests appeared in the four episodes of the program.

Beginning on May 14, 2012, Saviano hosted the program Quello che (non) ho (What I (don't) have), once again with Fabio Fazio. It aired on La7 and also streamed live on YouTube. The first episode was a record for La7 with 12.65% of viewers, or 3,036,000 viewers, and was the third most-watched program of the evening. This record was surpassed two days later with the third and final episode of the program, which registered 13.06% of viewers.

Saviano contributed an op-ed piece to the January 24, 2010 issue of the New York Times entitled, "Italy's African Heroes" He wrote about the January 2010 riots between African immigrants and Italians in Rosarno, a town in Calabria. Saviano suggests that the Africans' rioting was more of a response to their exploitation by the 'Ndrangheta, or Calabrian mafia, than to the hostility of Italians.

In November 2010, he hosted, along with Fabio Fazio, the Italian television program "Vieni via con me", which was broadcast over four weeks by Rai 3. His book ZeroZeroZero was published by Feltrinelli in 2013, and the English translation was published by Penguin Random House in July, 2015. This book is a study of the business around the drug cocaine, covering its movement across continents and the role of drug money in international finance.

During the demonstration For Truth, for Israel, organized by representative Fiamma Nirenstein of the PdL and held in Rome on October 7, 2010, Saviano participated through a video message, praising the Hebrew state as a place of freedom and civilization. In his speech, the writer spoke of his Jewish roots and declared that Israel is a "democracy under siege," Tel Aviv is "a hospitable city" "that never sleeps, is full of life and, above all, tolerance, a city that succeeds more than any other in welcoming the gay community" and that "the refugees of Darfur, for example, are welcomed in Israel."

In March 2006, he published Gomorrah, a novel inspired by real situations. He is the author, along with Mario Gelardi, of a theatrical work of the same name and is a screenwriter for Gomorrah, the movie drawn from his novel. On December 10, 2009, in the presence of Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo, Saviano received the title of Honorary Member of the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera and the Second Level Academic Diploma Honoris Causa in Communication and Art Education, which is the maximum degree given by the university. Saviano dedicated the awards to the southerners in Milan. On January 22, 2011, the University of Genoa awarded him a bachelor's degree honoris causa in law "for the important contribution to the fight against crime and to the defense of legality in our country". Saviano dedicated the honor to the judges of Milan's district attorney office who were investigating Rubygate. This led to the controversy with Marina Berlusconi, daughter of Silvio Berlusconi and president of the publishing house Arnoldo Mondadori Editore.

As of August 2009, the book had sold 2.5 million copies in Italy alone and was translated in 52 countries. In the rest of the world, about 2 million copies of Gomorrah were sold. It was present in the bestseller lists in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Sweden, Finland, Lithuania, Albania, Israel, Lebanon and Austria.

In October 2009, the head of the Rapid Response Team of Naples, Vittorio Pisani, questioned the need for a security detail to protect Roberto Saviano, maintaining that the death threats had not been confirmed. In 2008 the director Pasquale Squitieri also cast doubt on the appropriateness of the security detail. According to him, Saviano went to the Cannes Film Festival "probably to put on a bit of a show" and "those who are really targets have body guards, of course, but they are also prohibited from flying on [commercial] planes and frequenting public places because they could put themselves and others in danger." Squitieri's declarations triggered a controversy between the two of them, and the producer of the film Gomorrah, Domenico Procacci, intervened, calling Squitieri's declarations "despicable."

The ruling declares that the clan influenced the editorial policy of the paper, which is published by Gruppo Libra, the same company that charged Saviano with plagiarism (see "Plagiarism dispute" above) after he criticized the editorial policy of some of their local newspapers on several occasions: at the Mantova Festivaletteratura in 2008, in a special for the television show Che tempo che fa on March 25, 2009, and in the book La parola contro la camorra (in 2010).

After the Neapolitan Police investigations, the Italian Minister for Interior Affairs Giuliano Amato assigned a personal bodyguard and transferred Saviano from Naples. In autumn 2008, the informant Carmine Schiavone, cousin of the imprisoned Casalesi clan boss Francesco Schiavone, revealed to the authorities that the clan had planned to eliminate Saviano and his police escort by Christmas on the motorway between Rome and Naples with a bomb; in the same period, Saviano announced his intention to leave Italy, in order to stop having to live as a convict and reclaim his life.

On October 20, 2008, six Nobel Prize-awarded authors and intellectuals (Orhan Pamuk, Dario Fo, Rita Levi-Montalcini, Desmond Tutu, Günter Grass, and Mikhail Gorbachev) published an article saying that they side with Saviano against Camorra, and they think that Camorra is not just a problem of security and public order, but also a democratic one. They also think that the Italian government must protect his life, and help Saviano in having a normal life. Signatures were collected on the web site of the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

A stage show was based on Gomorrah, which earned Saviano the best actor of a new Italian play at the Olimpici del Teatro/Theater Olympics in 2008. A film of the same name, Gomorrah, directed by Matteo Garrone, was also based on the book; it won the prestigious Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008. In 2009 the film won the Tonino Guerra Prize for best script at the Bari International Film Festival (BIF&ST).

On March 14, 2008, during the Spartacus Trial, the attorney for Casalese bosses Francesco Bidognetti and Antonio Iovine, Michele Santonastaso (assisted by Carmine D'Aniello), read a letter written jointly by Bidognetti and Iovine (while both were in prison) to the president of the First Section of the Appellate Court of Assizes, Raimondo Romeres. The letter contained a request to move the trial due to legittima suspicione, or doubt surrounding the impartiality of the judicial body, caused by the alleged influence of Roberto Saviano, Rosaria Capacchione and the district attorneys Federico Cafiero de Raho and Raffaele Cantone on the judges. Following the letter, the Minister of the Interior decided to strengthen the security measures for the writer, increasing his police escort from three to five men. The bosses, Francesco Bidognetti and Antonio Iovine, and their attorneys, Michele Santonastaso and Carmine D'Aniello, were charged with intimidation for "mafia purposes" of Saviano and Capacchione (the case against the alleged threats of the magistrates were taken up in Rome). Before the third criminal section of the Court of Naples, the Assistant Prosecutor of the District Anti-Mafia Directorate (DDA), Antonello Ardituro, requested conviction: one year and six months of prison, the maximum sentence, for boss Francesco Bidognetti and attorneys Michele Santonastaso and Carmine D'Aniello. (Acquittal due to insufficient proof was requested for the other boss, Antonio Iovine). The attorney general for Reggio Calabria, Federico Cafiero de Raho, testified during the trial that Saviano was a "mortal enemy of the clan" and recalled that Saviano was among the few journalists present at all 52 of the prosecutor's closing speeches for the Spartacus Trial.

On October 14, 2008, there was news of a possible assassination attempt on Roberto Saviano. A police inspector of the Anti-Mafia Investigation Department (DIA) of Milan informed the DDA that the pentito, Carmine Schiavone (cousin of boss Francesco Schiavone, aka Sandokan), had informed him of a plan, already in operation, to kill the writer and his bodyguards before Christmas through a spectacular attack on the highway between Rome and Naples in the style of Capaci. Yet, when interrogated by magistrates, Carmine Schiavone denied knowing about a plan hatched by the Casalesi to kill Saviano, provoking the writer's immediate response: "It's obvious that he'd say this; if he were to talk [about the plan], it would mean implicitly admitting to still having connections with organized crime". In the end the district attorney heading the investigation requested and obtained dismissal of the case after the news was revealed to be unfounded. Carmine Schiavone denied knowing anything about the attack but confirmed that Saviano was condemned to death by the Casalese clan.

In October 2008, Saviano decided to leave Italy "at least for some time and then we'll see", also as a result of threats, which were confirmed by reports and statements from informants, revealing the Casalese clan's plan to eliminate him .

On October 20, 2008, six international Nobel Prize winners rallied in support of Roberto Saviano, asking the Italian government to do something to protect him and to defeat the Camorra and emphasizing the fact that organized crime is not merely a problem for police that only concerns the writer, but is a problem for democracy that concerns all free citizens. The appeal of the six Nobel laureates concludes that these citizens cannot tolerate the fact that the events described in Saviano's book are taking place in 2008 in Europe, just as they can't tolerate that the price one pays for denouncing these events means losing one's freedom and safety. The six Nobel Prize winners who launched the appeal are Dario Fo, Mikhail Gorbachev, Günter Grass, Rita Levi-Montalcini, Orhan Pamuk and Desmond Tutu.

(Publication of the conversation between Saviano and William Langewiesche at the Ferrara Internazionale Literary Festival in 2007.)

After the first death threats of 2006 made by the Casalesi clan of the Camorra, a clan which he had denounced in his exposé and in the piazza of Casal di Principe during a demonstration in defense of legality, Roberto Saviano was put under a strict security protocol. Since October 13, 2006, he has lived under police protection.

In 2006, following the success of the non-fiction Gomorrah, which denounces the activities of the Camorra, Saviano received ominous threats. These have been confirmed by police informants and reports that have revealed attempts on Saviano's life, by the Casalesi clan. Investigators have claimed the Camorra selected Casalesi clan boss Giuseppe Setola to kill Saviano over the book, although the alleged hit never occurred.

In March 2006, his first book, Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples' Organized Crime System, was published as part of Mondadori's Strade Blu series. It is a journey into the business and criminal world of the Camorra and of the places where the organization was born and lives: the region of Campania, the city of Naples, the towns of Casal di Principe, San Cipriano d'Aversa, and the territory around Aversa known as the agro aversano. Having grown up there, the author introduces the reader to a reality that is unknown to outsiders. The book talks about criminal bosses' sumptuous villas copied from Hollywood films; rural lands filled with the toxic waste of half of Europe; a population that not only cohabitates with this organized crime but even protects it and approves of its actions. Therefore, the author writes about a System (this is the real name used to refer to the Camorra) that attracts new recruits before adolescence, making them believe that theirs is the only possible life choice; about baby-bosses who are convinced that the only way to die like a real man is to be killed; and about a criminal phenomenon influenced by media spectacle, in which bosses base their clothes and movements on film stars.

During a demonstration for legality in Casal di Principe on September 23, 2006, the writer denounced the business of the bosses of the Casalese clan: Francesco Bidognetti, Francesco Schiavone (currently in prison), and the two ruling bosses at the time, Antonio Iovine and Michele Zagaria. He addressed them in fiery tones ("You are not from this land! Quit being part of this land!) and invited residents to rebel. Because of the threats and intimidations Saviano endured, the then Minister of the Interior, Giuliano Amato, decided to assign police protection to the writer beginning on October 13, 2006. (Saviano was returning from Pordenone where he had been promoting Gomorrah.)

Annalisa Durante, killed by crossfire in the Forcella neighborhood of Naples on March 27, 2004, at fourteen years old. Fourteen years old. Fourteen years old. Repeating it is like rubbing a sponge of ice-cold water along your back." (Roberto Saviano comments on the death of a young girl) Around here keeping your mouth shut is not the simple, silent omertà of lowered hats and eyes. Here the prevailing attitude is "It's not my problem." But that's not all. [...] The word becomes a shout. A loud and piercing cry hurled at bulletproof glass in hopes of making it shatter.

In 2004 the internet site Carmilla Online collected signatures in support of the ex-terrorist member of PAC (Armed Proletarians for Communism), Cesare Battisti, who had become a writer and was then hiding in France and Brazil. They collected more than 1,500 signatures from the political-cultural arenas of France and Italy. Roberto Saviano's signature also appeared on the document, but in January 2009, he retracted his signature in respect for the victims. This petition attracted media attention thanks to the interest of the weekly magazine Panorama.

Son of Luigi Saviano, a Neapolitan doctor, and Miriam Haftar, a Ligurian of Jewish origins, Roberto Saviano received his high school diploma from the State Scientific High School "Armando Diaz" and then graduated in Philosophy from the University of Naples Federico II, where he was the student of historian Francesco Barbagallo. He began his career in journalism in 2002, writing for numerous magazines and daily papers, including Pulp, Diario, Sud, Il manifesto, the website Nazione Indiana, and for the Camorra monitoring unit of the Corriere del Mezzogiorno. His articles at the time were already important enough to spur judicial authorities at the beginning of 2005 to listen to him regarding organized crime. He is an atheist.

Roberto Saviano (Italian: [roˈbɛrto saˈvjaːno] ; born September 22, 1979) is an Italian writer, essayist and screenwriter. In his writings, including articles and his book Gomorrah (his debut that brought him fame), he uses literature and investigative reporting to tell of the economic reality of the territory and business of the Camorra crime syndicate and of organized crime more generally.

Such a theory, according to the director of the Corriere del Mezzogiorno, Marco Demarco, came from an "anonymous source" reported by Ugo Pirro in the magazine Oggi in 1950. Actually, two detailed sources document the episode described by Saviano. A later and better known one is by Carlo del Balzo who describes the tragedy suffered by the Croce family in a book published shortly after the event: Cronaca del Tremuoto di Casamicciola (Report on the Casamicciola Earthquake) (Naples: Carluccio, De Blasio & Co., 1883). Nevertheless, there is also a previous book drawn on by Carlo del Balzo. It's called Ricordi. Casamicciola e le sue rovine. Cenni storici – Geografici – Cronologici (Memories. Casamicciola and its ruins. Historical – Geographic – Chronological Accounts) (Naples: Prete, 1883.). The passage taken by del Balzo is the following:

Saviano was accused by the granddaughter of Benedetto Croce, Marta Herling, of having written a dishonest article about the Abruzzese philosopher. The writer affirmed that during the 1883 earthquake of Casamicciola in which he lost his parents and sister, Croce allegedly followed his dying father's advice and offered 100,000 lire (a very large sum for the time) to whoever helped him out from under the rubble. The testimony taken up by Saviano during the show Vieni via con me (Come away with me) in 2010, was denied by Herling in a letter published in the Corriere del Mezzogiorno and in two interviews given to TG1, during which she explicitly maintained that the writer invented the episode.