Description
Book SynopsisIn MAFIA REPUBLIC, John Dickie, Professor of Italian Studies at University College, London and author of the international bestsellers COSA NOSTRA and MAFIA BROTHERHOODS, shows how the Italian mafias have grown in power and become more and more interconnected, with terrifying consequences.
In 1946, Italy became a democratic Republic, thereby entering the family of modern western nations. But deep within Italy there lurked a forgotten curse: three major criminal brotherhoods, whose methods had been honed over a century of experience. As Italy grew, so did the mafias. Sicily''s Cosa Nostra, the camorra from Naples, and the mysterious ''ndrangheta from Calabria stood ready to enter the wealthiest and bloodiest period of their long history.
Italy made itself rich by making scooters, cars and handbags. The mafias carved out their own route to wealth through tobacco smuggling, construction, kidnapping and narcotics. And as criminal business grew exponentially, the ma
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John Dickie combines narrative skills in his description of skulduggery with excellent pen portraits of striking individuals...no one anywhere writes with such authority on Italy's criminal gangs. * Times Literary Supplement *
Chilling and eye-opening. -- Bill Emmott * The Times *
'I've been so unsettled by John Dickie's Mafia Republic - his angry and moving new history of the power of the Italian criminal fraternities since the Second World War.' -- Samira Ahmed * Big Issue *
REVIEWS FOR MAFIA BROTHERHOODS: * . *
His narrative bowls along, powered by the sort of muscular prose one associates with great detective fiction. An exhilarating history. * Financial Times *
'Exciting and well-written... like a 19th-century Sopranos'. * Shortlist *
'Fine social history and hair-raising true crime'. * Independent *
By shining a light so powerfully into the darkest recesses of mafia mythology and history, Dickie's new book will certainly provide a concrete tool in the anti-mafia struggle to which many Italians and Calabrians in Australia and Italy are passionately committed. * Australian Literary Review *
Magisterial ... absorbing. * Scotsman *
BLOOD BROTHERHOODS is almost certainly the most ambitious true-crime assignment ever. The result is a stunning success: a sprawling, powerful historical narrative that is the definitive story of Sicily's Mafia, the Camorra of Naples, and Calabria's 'Ndrangheta. * The Adelaide Advertiser *
Yet Dickie thinks there are "more reasons for optimism today than at any point in the past"... it's a point well made. * Financial Times *
