Roberto Saviano (; born 22 September 1979) is an Italian writer, journalist, and screenwriter. In his writings, including articles and his book Gomorrah, he uses literature and investigative reporting to tell of the economic reality of the territory and business of organized crime in Italy, in particular the Camorra crime syndicate, and of organized crime more generally. His writing has drawn praise from other writers and cultural figures, such as Umberto Eco.
After receiving death threats in 2006 made by the Casalesi clan of the Camorra, a clan which he had denounced in his exposé and in the piazza of Casal di Principe during a demonstration in defence of legality, Saviano was put under a strict security protocol. Since 13 October 2006, he has lived under police protection.
Saviano has collaborated with numerous important Italian and international newspapers. Currently, he writes for the Italian publications l'Espresso, la Repubblica, and The Post Internazionale. Internationally, he collaborates in the United States with The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Time; in Spain with El País; in Germany with Die Zeit and Der Spiegel; in Sweden with Expressen; and in the United Kingdom with The Times and The Guardian.
Biography
Son of Luigi Saviano, a Neapolitan doctor, and Miriam Haftar, a Ligurian of Jewish origins, Roberto Saviano received his high school diploma from the Armando Diaz State Scientific High School and then graduated in philosophy from the University of Naples Federico II, where he was the student of historian Francesco Barbagallo. In 1997, while in high school, he grew close to the Italian Marxist–Leninist Party (PMLI) and published articles on its weekly newspaper, Il Bolscevico, under the pseudonym Roberto Ercolino. However, in 2001, he broke all links with the PMLI.
He began his career in journalism in 2002, writing for numerous magazines and daily papers, including Pulp, , , , the website , and for the Camorra monitoring unit of the . His articles at the time were already important enough to spur judicial authorities at the beginning of 2005 to listen to him regarding organized crime.
In March 2006, he published Gomorrah, about the Camorra. He is the author, along with Mario Gelardi, of a theatrical work of the same name and is a screenwriter for Gomorrah, the movie based on the book. On 10 December 2009, in the presence of Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo, Saviano received the title of Honorary Member of the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera and the Second Level Academic Diploma Honoris Causa in Communication and Art Education, which is the highest degree given by the university. On 22 January 2011, the University of Genoa awarded him a bachelor's degree honoris causa in law "for the important contribution to the fight against crime and to the defence of legality in our country". Saviano dedicated the honour to the judges of Milan's district attorney's office who were investigating Rubygate. This led to a controversy with Marina Berlusconi, daughter of Silvio Berlusconi and president of the publishing house Arnoldo Mondadori Editore.
Saviano is primarily influenced by southern Italian intellectuals such as Giustino Fortunato and Gaetano Salvemini, by the anarchists Errico Malatesta and Mikhail Bakunin, and by poet Rocco Scotellaro. Additionally, he has said that his educational background includes many prominent writers such as Ernst Jünger, Ezra Pound, Louis Ferdinand Celine, Carl Schmitt, and Julius Evola.
In 2015, Saviano collaborated with the Neapolitan playwright Mimmo Borrelli on the play Sanghenapule – Vita straordinaria di San Gennaro, which was part of the 2015/2016 season of the Piccolo Teatro of Milan.
In 2006, following the success of Gomorrah, which denounces the activities of the Camorra, Saviano received ominous threats. These were confirmed by police informants and reports that revealed attempts on Saviano's life by the Casalesi clan. Investigators have claimed that the Camorra selected Casalesi clan boss Giuseppe Setola to kill Saviano.
After the Neapolitan police investigations, the Italian Minister for Interior Affairs Giuliano Amato assigned Saviano a personal bodyguard and transferred him from Naples. In the fall of 2008, informant Carmine Schiavone, cousin of the imprisoned Casalesi clan boss Francesco Schiavone, revealed to the authorities that the clan had planned to eliminate Saviano and his police escort by Christmas on the motorway between Rome and Naples with a bomb; in the same period, Saviano announced his intention to leave Italy in order to stop having to live as a convict and reclaim his life.
On 20 October 2008, six Nobel Prize-awarded authors and intellectuals (Orhan Pamuk, Dario Fo, Rita Levi-Montalcini, Desmond Tutu, Günter Grass, and Mikhail Gorbachev) published an article saying that they sided with Saviano against the Camorra. They also stated that the Italian government must protect Saviano's life and help him lead a normal life. Signatures were collected on the website of the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.
Saviano contributed an op-ed piece to the 24 January 2010 issue of the New York Times, entitled "Italy's African Heroes". He wrote about the January 2010 riots between African immigrants and Italians in Rosarno, a town in Calabria. Saviano suggests that the rioting was more of a response to the migrants' exploitation by the 'Ndrangheta, or Calabrian mafia, than to the hostility of Italians.
In November 2010, he hosted, along with Fabio Fazio, the Italian television program Vieni via con me, which was broadcast over four weeks by Rai 3.
Saviano's book, was published by Feltrinelli in 2013, and the English translation was published by Penguin Random House in July 2015. This book is a study of the financial dealings around cocaine, covering its movement across continents and the role of drug money in international finance.
In October 2023, Saviano was given a suspended €1,000 fine for his use of profanity against Giorgia Meloni in December 2020. Saviano used the word during a televised interview while describing Meloni's and Matteo Salvini's anti-immigration stance. Per the ruling, Saviano will only have to pay the fine if he repeats the offence. According to Saviano's lawyer, he will appeal the verdict.
Gomorrah, ZeroZeroZero
In March 2006, Saviano's first book, Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples' Organized Crime System, was published as part of Mondadori's Strade Blu series. It describes the business and criminal world of the Camorra and of the places where the organization was born and exists: the region of Campania, the city of Naples, the towns of Casal di Principe, San Cipriano d'Aversa, and the territory around Aversa known as the agro aversano. Having grown up there, the author introduces the reader to a reality unknown to outsiders. The book talks about the criminal bosses' sumptuous villas copied from Hollywood films, rural lands filled with the toxic waste of half of Europe, and a population that not only cohabitates with organised crime but even protects it and approves of its actions.
As of August 2009, the book had sold 2.5 million copies in Italy alone and was translated into 52 languages. In the rest of the world, about 2 million copies of Gomorrah were sold. It was present on bestseller lists in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Sweden, Finland, Lithuania, Albania, Israel, Lebanon, and Austria.
A stage show was based on Gomorrah, earning Saviano the best actor of a new Italian play award at the Olimpici del Teatro/Theater Olympics in 2008. A film of the same name, directed by Matteo Garrone, was also created; it won the prestigious Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008. In 2009, the film won the Tonino Guerra Prize for best script at the Bari International Film Festival.
A television show titled Gomorrah - La serie was produced by Sky Italia, Fandango, Cattleya, Beta Film, and LA7, under the supervision of Saviano and the direction of Stefano Sollima, Francesca Comencini, and Claudio Cupellini. It ran for five series, commencing in 2014 and concluding in 2021.
In 2016, the same production crew began filming ZeroZeroZero, an adaptation of Saviano's 2013 book of the same name about the international cocaine trade.
Threats and life under police protection The success of his book created numerous problems for Saviano, starting with threatening letters, silent phone calls, and protective isolation.
During a demonstration for legality in Casal di Principe on 23 September 2006, the writer denounced the business of the leaders of the Casalese clan, Francesco Bidognetti and Francesco Schiavone (currently in prison), and the two ruling bosses at the time, Antonio Iovine and Michele Zagaria. He addressed them in robust tones ("You are not from this land! Quit being part of this land!") and invited residents to rebel. Because of the threats and intimidation Saviano received consequently, the then-Minister of the Interior, Giuliano Amato, decided to assign him police protection beginning on 13 October 2006.
On 14 March 2008, during the Spartacus Trial, the attorney for Casalese bosses Francesco Bidognetti and Antonio Iovine, Michele Santonastaso (assisted by Carmine D'Aniello), read a letter written jointly by Bidognetti and Iovine (while both were in prison) to the president of the First Section of the Appellate Court of Assizes, Raimondo Romeres. The letter contained a request to move the trial due to legittima suspicione, or doubt surrounding the impartiality of the judicial body, caused by the alleged influence of Roberto Saviano, Rosaria Capacchione, and the district attorneys Federico Cafiero de Raho and Raffaele Cantone, on the judges. Following this, Minister of the Interior Amato decided to strengthen security measures for the writer, increasing his police escort from three to five men. Bidognetti and Iovine, and their attorneys Michele Santonastaso and Carmine D'Aniello, were then charged with intimidation of Saviano and Capacchione. Before the third criminal section of the Court of Naples, the Assistant Prosecutor of the District Anti-Mafia Directorate (DDA), Antonello Ardituro, requested the maximum sentence on conviction of one year and six months imprisonment. The sentence was passed for Bidognetti, Santonastaso, and D'Aniello, while Iovine was acquitted due to insufficient proof. The attorney general for Reggio Calabria, Federico Cafiero de Raho, testified during the trial, stating that Saviano was a "mortal enemy of the clan" and recalling that Saviano was among the few journalists present at all 52 of the prosecutor's closing speeches for the Spartacus Trial.
On 14 October 2008, reports emerged of a possible assassination plot against Saviano. A police inspector of the Milan Anti-Mafia Investigation Department DIA) informed the DDA that the pentito, Carmine Schiavone (cousin of boss Francesco Schiavone, aka Sandokan), had informed him of a plan, already in operation, to kill the writer and his bodyguards before Christmas through a spectacular attack on the highway between Rome and Naples, in the style of the assassination of anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone at Capaci. However, when interrogated by magistrates, Schiavone denied any knowledge of the plan, provoking the writer's immediate response: "It's obvious that he'd say this; if he were to talk [about the plan], it would mean implicitly admitting to still having connections with organized crime". Subsequently, the district attorney heading the investigation requested and obtained dismissal of the case as the reports appeared to be unfounded, although Schiavone confirmed that Saviano had been condemned to death by the Casalese clan.
In October 2008, Saviano decided to leave Italy for a time, as the result of threats, which were confirmed by reports and statements from informants, revealing a Casalesi clan plan to eliminate him.