About this item
We live in their buildings, work in their companies, shop in their stores, eat in their restaurants, and elect politicians they fund. Founded more than 150 years ago by shepherding families in the toe of Italy, the Ndrangheta is today the world's most powerful mafia, with a crushing presence in Southern Italy, a market-moving size in global finance and a reach that extends to fifty countries around the world. And yet, remarkably, few of us have ever heard of it.The Ndrangheta's power rests on a code of silence, omert, enforced by a claustrophobic family hierarchy and murderous misogyny. Men and boys rule. Girls are married off as teenagers in arranged clan alliances. Beatings are routine. A woman who is unfaithful'--even to a dead husband--can expect her sons, brothers, or father to kill her to erase the family shame.
About the Author
Alex Perry is TIME's Africa Bureau Chief, based in Cape Town, covering 49 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. From 2002 to 2006, he was South Asia bureau chief, based in New Delhi, covering Afghanistan to Bangladesh. He joined TIME as a staff writer and travel editor in Hong Kong in February 2001.Perry has covered the Afghan and Iraq wars and conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kashmir, Kenya, Liberia, Libya, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan (Darfur, Kordofan and South Sudan), Uganda and Zimbabwe. He has reported on terrorism and terror attacks in Asia and Africa, the 2004 South Asian tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and a volcano in Montserrat. He has interviewed leaders as diverse as the Dalai Lama, Sonia Gandhi, Desmond Tutu and Bill Clinton, as well as presidents, prime ministers, rebel leaders, crime lords, pirates and Bollywood superstars. In 2002, the Indian government tried to deport him when he questioned the state of the Prime Minister's health and in 2007, while attempting to cover Zimbabwe's implosion, Perry was held in jail there for five days before being convicted of being a "determined and resourceful journalist" and fined 2 cents. In late 2008, his first book - Falling Off The Edge: Globalization, World Peace and Other Lies (Bloomsbury USA; Macmillan UK) - was published. The book drew on his wide experience to argue that far from being a global panacea for peace and prosperity, globalization was at the root of much modern conflict. His second book, Lifeblood: How to Change the World, One Dead Mosquito at a Time (Public Affairs US; Hurst UK; Picador Africa) follows the remarkable global campaign to wipe malaria off the planet, arguing its innovations have much to teach the world of aid and business.TIME cover stories have included Afghanistan, Iraq, the Asian tsunami, the Kashmir quake, several (including a special issue) on India, Nepal, West Africa's oil, hunger in Ethiopia, South Africa's 2009 elections, South Africa's 2010 World Cup, malaria, Zimbabwe (two), the illegal Africa-to-Asia trade in rhino horn, Asia's child slave trade, and Bangladesh's emergence from terror and poverty. For his cover story on the al Qaeda prison uprising outside Mazar-i-Sharif in November 2001, Perry won three awards: the inaugural Joseph L. Galloway War Correspondents Award, presented by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, the Society of Publishers in Asia award for Excellence in Reporting and a Special Citation for Reporting in the Henry Luce Awards. "Inside the Battle at Qala-i-Jangi" was also published in the "Best of American Magazine Journalism 2002," an anthology by the American Society of Magazine Editors. In 2004, Perry was runner up in the South Asia Journalism Association's Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding Story, for a September 2003 article on the civil war in Nepal. In 2005 and 2006, a TIME special issue on the tsunami, for
