I'm Still Alive

by Roberto Saviano, Asaf Hanuka (Illustrator)

Overview

Over fifteen years after Gomorrah’s release, Saviano's life has been under constant threat from would be assassins who forced him to leave his native Italy and to live under constant police protection. For the first time since then, Saviano shares his deepest thoughts and experiences of early life in Naples, witnessing the power and violence of Camorra firsthand, his current existence living under guard, all the while continuing to call attention to the deeply rooted crime and corruption that plagues his home.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781641445597
Publisher:	Archaia
Publication date:	10/05/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	144
File size:	37 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

Editorial Reviews

★ 10/24/2022

Journalist Saviano (Zero, Zero, Zero) teams up with artist Hanuka (The Realist) for an extraordinary chronicle of surviving in exile. After Gomorrah, Saviano’s exposé of the Camorra, was published in 2006, the mob, which maintained an iron grip on Naples and southern Italy, marked the writer for death. After several attempts were made on his life, Saviano entered into a witness protection program, never able to return home or see his friends and family again. Hanuka’s dynamic artwork perfectly complements Saviano’s script, vividly capturing his mental state as he documents his daily routine under constant police surveillance, looks back mournfully at his former life, and recalls the terror of close calls with assassins. “Plenty of people have gone out of their way to tell me how I’m going to die,” he writes, as Hanuka draws bombs hiding in cars or even in a cake. Throughout, Saviano also details the rituals, methodology, and crimes of the Camorra. Though Saviano’s isolation, introspection, and self-pity come through, the comics most poignantly capture his resilience—each day provides a new opportunity to bring change in the world: “I write. I make my voice heard. I refuse to keep silent.” This gripping account deserves a wide readership. Agent: Katie Cacouris, Wylie Agency. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

2022-10-26
In this graphic memoir, Saviano chronicles how a book he wrote about organized crime forced him into hiding.

In 2006, author Saviano published Gomorrah, an account of the violent war between Camorra Mafia clans in Casal di Principe, Italy. He intended his illumination of organized crime, “a dictatorship within a democracy,” as a “journalistic novel” inspired by writers like Albert Camus and Truman Capote. The book achieved great success and its author, considerable notoriety, but it also transformed his life in much darker ways. He faced intimidation and death threats by criminal elements who were offended by his exposé, and he was forced into police protection. Stringent security protocols were put into place; they were meant to only last weeks but instead went on for an interminable 15 years. Eventually, the author left his homeland for the United States to teach at New York University and was assigned a new identity for his protection. In harrowing detail, Saviano details the various plots to assassinate him that were uncovered and the increasing psychological effects of his forced isolation. In place of literary celebrity, he was saddled with “absolute solitude and plaguing bureaucratic complexity.” Every aspect of his quotidian existence became a challenge, from taking walks and dating to seeking medical assistance. It was a torturous predicament poignantly captured in these pages: “It’s like living in an aquarium: everyone is looking at me. And I look back, but from behind glass. I hold my breath and I keep thinking that as long as the things I want to do outnumber the things I’m not allowed to, I can handle it. Who knows if it’s true.” However, the tone of Saviano’s book can be cloyingly theatrical at times (“You bastards, I’m still alive!”). One sees a similar heavy-handedness in Hanuka’s overwrought illustrations—mostly grayscale with pops of color—that accompany the story. Still, this is a powerful tale of moral corruption and the cost of one’s resistance to it.

A sometimes-affecting remembrance about the wages of opposing evil hampered by uneven execution.

Kirkus Reviews