About this item
In Gomorrah, a New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year, Roberto Saviano revealed a true, devastating portrait of Naples, Italy under the rule of the Camorra, a crime organization more powerful and violent than the Mafia. In The Piranhas, the international bestselling author returns to his home city with a novel of gang warfare and a young man's dark desire to rise to the top of Naples's underworld.In Naples, there is a new kind of gang ruling the streets: the paranze, or the children's gangs, groups of teenage boys who divide their time between counting Facebook likes, playing Call of Duty on their PlayStations, and patrolling the streets armed with pistols and AK-47s, terrorizing local residents in order to mark out their Mafia bosses' territory.Roberto Saviano's The Piranhas tells the story of the rise of one such gang and its leader, Nicolas -- known to his friends and enemies as the Maharajah. Nicolas's ambitions reach far beyond doing other men's bidding: he wants to be the one giving the orders, calling the shots, and ruling the city. But the violence he is accustomed to wielding and witnessing soon spirals beyond his control -- with tragic consequences.
About the Author
Roberto Saviano (Italian: [ro?b?rto sa?vjano]; Naples, September 22, 1979) is an Italian journalist, writer and essayist. He is the author of international bestsellers Gomorrah and ZeroZeroZero.In his writings, his articles, his books and his television programs, he uses literature and investigative reporting to tell of the economic reality of the territory and business of the Camorra and of organized crime more generally.After the first death threats of 2006 made by the Casalese clan, a cartel of the Camorra, which he denounced in his exposé and in the piazza of Casal di Principe during a demonstration in defense of legality, Saviano was put under a strict security protocol. Since October 13, 2006, he has lived under police protection.He has collaborated with numerous important Italian and international newspapers. Currently he writes for the Italian publications l'Espresso and la Repubblica. Internationally, he collaborates in the United States with The Washington Post, The New York Times, Newsweek and Time; in Spain with El Pais; in Germany with Die Zeit and Der Spiegel; in Sweden with Expressen; and in the United Kingdom with The Times and The Guardian.His courageous positions have provoked appeals on his behalf from many important writers and other cultural figures, such as Umberto Eco.In 2015 he launched his own editorial project, RSO-Roberto Saviano Online.Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by piero tasso (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) ], via Wikimedia Commons.
