Gomorrah is a book written by Roberto Saviano and published in 2006, which became a major bestseller in Italy. It is an inside and non-fictional story which recounts how the organized crime network known as Camorra - more powerful and violent than the Mafia - operates and rules in the city of Naples with its international influence and illegal businesses in construction, high fashion, illicit drugs, and toxic-waste disposal.

Saviano describes the activities in which the group is involved from receiving big cargoes of Chinese good in the port of Naples and then redistributing them all over Europe, controlling thousands of Chinese factories which produce fashion goods legally and illegally to be in control of their distribution around the world, to causing harmful consequences for people who live in the region and also in other countries due to the abusive management of toxic waste.         

The author was born in Naples in 1979 and because of this book and the death threats he received after its publication, he has been living under protection with security since 2006.

He holds a university degree in philosophy, has worked for an anti-Mafia watchdog group and has written several articles published in Italy. 

Gomorrah is his first book, it has been translated in more than fifty countries, it became a major international bestseller and a social phenomenon and sold more than ten million copies all over the world and 750,000 copies in Italy.

For the purpose of writing this book, Roberto Saviano decided to work as an assistant at a Chinese textile manufacturer, as a waiter at a Camorra wedding and on a construction site. He saw his first murder when he was fourteen and was on his way to school and his father – a doctor – was brutally beaten because he tried to help a young victim who had been left for dead in the street. 

Gomorrah is a book that vividly and truthfully deals with the power of this organized crime group, its economic and financial rising, its military preponderance and its process of becoming a business committee. Saviano tells the story in a first-person manner directly from the places where the crimes have been committed, from the stores and factories owned by the group by gathering proof and legends. It all begins with the Secondigliano (a neighbourhood in Naples) war, with the growing emergence of a specific criminal group and an internal conflict that caused the death of 80 people in a little bit more than one month.            

“In April 2006 the Italian publishing world was shocked by a resounding and unexpected bestseller, which quickly turned into a cultural, social and civil earthquake: Gomorrah”.

This is an unusual book which tackles the subject in a way that has never been done before, merging the accuracy of a researcher, the courage of an investigative journalist, the passion of a writer and the bittersweet love for a city from someone who was born and raised there.  

Gomorrah is a very powerful, passionate, and brutal book which captures the readers and leads them into a story that is very difficult to imagine.   

A review by the New York Times, describes the book as a “literary sensation” built on trial transcriptions, the author’s personal reporting, economic considerations and social history which led it to become one of the most important Italian books ever written.      

This story opens a reality that most people knew it existed, but no one precisely understood how it worked or could possibly dare to imagine the ramification of this sort of criminal activities and how much they influence our lives. This book makes us aware and force us to face the reality of a widespread and systemic disease that eradicates our country.

It opens a dark abyss, as dark as the of Naples is here described – a place that the same author described as “a place where bad becomes all bad and good becomes total purity.”

The book’s final scene is extremely powerful in itself as Saviano walks in a toxic wasteland while covering his face with a handkerchief to protect himself against the dioxin fires.

“Gomorrah is a bold and important work of investigative writing that holds global significance, one heroic young man's impassioned story of a place under the rule of a murderous organization”.