Another one for the reading pile

I’m looking forward to reading Roberto Saviano’s “Gomorrah.” A riveting expose of the Neapolitan crime syndicate (known as the Camorra). I found Diego Gambetta’s “Sicilian Mafia” to be brilliant, a renowned sociologist’s unveiling of the logic of the Mafia. Saviano’s work is purely journalistic (he is only 28) but it should be fascinating to see whether Gambetta’s thesis (the mafia as a private protection agency) still applies. Doesn’t seem like it from the NYT review. The Camorra unlike the Mafia of Sicily has evolved into a complex international entity that holds the region’s economy in a stranglehold.
Here’s an excerpt from the Nov. 25th review entitled “Underworld”:

A powerful work of reportage, “Gomorrah” became a literary sensation when it appeared in Italy last year, selling an astonishing 600,000 copies. It started a national conversation, but also won its 28-year-old first-time author uglier accolades: death threats and a constant police escort. He now lives in hiding. The stakes are high. In “Gomorrah,” Saviano charts the Camorra’s involvement in the garment industry and its grip on the port of Naples, where 1.6 million tons of Chinese merchandise are unloaded a year — and another million pass through without a trace, evading taxes. In mapping out the Camorra’s control over garbage and industrial waste removal, as well as drug dealing, construction and public works fraud, Saviano considers human rights indicators (the price of an AK-47 is low in Campania), and economic ones (in the 1990s, the Mercedes sales in one Campania town were among the highest in Europe). Drawing on trial transcripts and his own reporting, he explains the internecine battles between rival factions of the Di Lauro clan for control of the region’s drug trade.

Saif,

I really have to thank you for the pointer towards Figes’ book. May I humbly suggest two pieces of work, both fiction? You should look up (and I MIGHT blog about them if I ever get any time): “Watchmen” by Alan Moore, a “comic book”, and “Lives of Others”, a German movie that won Best Foreign Film at the last Oscars

I was just going to suggest “Lives of Others!” Haven’t seen it yet, but certainly plan to. I wonder if I can get it here easily.

Graphic novel, not comic book.

Watchmen rocks. As do V for Vendetta, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and From Hell.

And coming from the ganj, suggest Jatin Sarkar’s ‘Pakistaner janma mrittu dorshon’ - autobiography of an unknown communist from the deep heart of East Bengal.

Leela,

If “here” is Dhaka, the answer is most likely “no”. Ask any friend residing abroad and coming home for winter to download and burn it onto a CD. Make sure you get it with the subtitles.

And Jyoti bhai,

Your reading habits clearly show you to be NOT hailing from the ganj. I want these city-dwelling, Moore-reading bloggers to declare themselves so that my children aren’t spoiled at their hands!

Ok, more seriously, I’m very impressed at the breadth of your reading. Never read League though.

I saw “The Lives of Others” and found it enjoyable and moving as a snapshot of oppression. I am now a third of the way through “The Whisperers” and can’t put it down. If TLOO is a snapshot, TW is the comprehensive epic that chronicles Stalinism on the micro, day-to-day life level; ties this micro level to the insane seismic shifts and inconguities of the Soviet system; and, perhaps unintentionally, exposes a back to the look at the roots of the contemporary West leftist “struggles” against religion and the nuclear family, and for universal pre-k, college speech codes, affirmative action and other “It Takes a Village …” initiatives.