He was 26 years old when Roberto Saviano (Naples, 1979) published Gomorrah, a true story that invited the reader to take a trip to the business and criminal empire of the Camorra. A first book that changed his life, in every way. Not only for giving him fame and putting him in the media spotlight, but because he forced him to live locked up against his will.
"If I could go back now and talk to that young man, I would tell him not to send the novel to any publisher, since that will totally destroy his life." But he did it and believes that there is no going back. If at that moment in his ideals, the fight against the mafia was already very present, now he considers that it is something that permeates all of his DNA. And he demonstrates this with his new book, The Brave Are Alone (Anagrama), focused on the figure of Giovanni Falcone, the Italian judge who tried to dismantle Cosa Nostra.
“This book is the most difficult test I have ever faced, because it has given me the opportunity to narrate one of the most brilliant minds that organized crime has ever faced. It is the story of a strong man, but defeated by the system,” Saviano advances during a video call with the press. He speaks from his house. Specifically, from a room full of paintings with characters staring at him. “They are works of art that I like and that I print so that they can keep an eye on me.” It is not a situation that is foreign to him. Since he was 26, he has had a bodyguard who follows him everywhere. “Today I am 44 and I don't know if any of this absurd life makes sense. I should have been more cautious and not stick out so much. What's the use? It's not just the mafias that are hostile towards me. “So is the world of politics.”
The title of the work gives a good clue as to how Falcone felt in the last months of his life. A perception that “we can pass on to Saviano himself, as his own life has demonstrated,” reflects Silvia Sesé, editorial director of Anagrama. The author himself remembers that “Falcone received praise after he died. While he was alive, envy, contempt and suspicion surrounded him, leading to isolation and death. And all to allow us to see the world in a different way. In short, they killed him because his head had to stop thinking.
Falcone was murdered along with his wife and three bodyguards by order of Salvatore Riina, one of the most famous members of Cosa Nostra. A public display of revenge for the years of judicial persecution of organized crime. One thousand kilos of explosives placed under the highway that connects Palermo with his airport exploded on May 23, 1992 while his vehicle was passing by there. Giovanni Brusca and Nino Gioè were in charge of carrying out the massacre.
“Falcone occupied a place in which all his predecessors had been murdered. He died the same way and so did his successor.” In this regard, Saviano believes that, no matter how many years go by, “Italy continues to be a country with a mafia vocation” and that “Europe is a continent contaminated by mafias”, although the Italian ones are the ones that resonate the most in the media.
