Apr 28, 2026 at 3:04 p.m
I made the biggest mistake, thinks Roberto Saviano.
Roberto Saviano. (source: TASR)
Have a beer with friends. Jump on the tram or ride a motorbike. Light a cigarette on the balcony. Go out on the balcony. The Italian writer Roberto Saviano has been unable to do any of this for twenty years.
Today, when someone asks him what his life is like, a one-word answer is enough.
Hell.
It was in 2006 when everything changed. He was twenty-six years old and published the book Gomorrah, which became a worldwide literary sensation. In it, he focused on the Camorra, the mafia network in his city, and described everything that until then no one dared to name.
His mother received the first shock
He was born and raised in Naples. Three murders on the street used to be a daily reality there. He would witness someone urinating out of fear of being stalked, or someone accidentally shot because they resembled someone who was actually being stalked.
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He was young and thought he could make a difference. He first studied the Camorra as an investigative journalist, then infiltrated the city businesses it owned. And finally he decided to expose everything and everyone in the book.
His dream came true. The most daring a writer can have. Twelve million copies of the book and its translations were sold, and his name became known throughout the world. At the beginning, he could not even imagine what such popularity would bring him, but the mafia taught him to count very quickly.
He had nothing left of everything he loved in life.
