TEresa Ciabatti is the rock star of Italian literature. And it is so changing that it could only be compared to Lady Gaga. With the new novel, Donnareginaamazes us a lot because tells the story of the boss of the Camorra Peppe Misso, called ‘or Nasonebut also ‘or jewel. Adored in the Sanità district, this man who officially committed 150 crimes, But it seems that they are many more, he was loved by a Naples abandoned by the state, because in the era of his regency, the 60s, not only killed, but created new laws.
Ciabatti met him for an interview on Corriere della Seraand then hunger grew by both. The boss said to her: «You have to write a book about me. You can only do it ». And so their long attendance began. But the spectacular of this beautiful novel is that many other things treat. And everything is intertwined, it gets perfectly perfectly. It is written with the lapilli of a volcano that are transformed into letters and then into words. Yes, Ciabatti writes like this.
Are I crazy if I tell you that this very religious criminal has a romantic side?
The protagonist of the story is a writer who, when he meets the boss, knows nothing about Camorra. And if at the beginning it seems a limit, then it understands that it is a force. Thanks to the lack of knowledge and prejudice she focuses on what for other crime scholars, judicial journalists – is waste material. But precisely in that material humanity lurks, in the sense of human traits. Misso who raises Colombi, Misso who believes in Ufo. Misso who cares about the mother from whom she cannot separate, so much so that she brings her to live with her. And again: Misso who buys one hundred and fifty hells in a year so that he wanted to be the head of his daughter who struggles to eat if not distracted by the birds that, however, with the summer, flee from the open window. To an expert of crime all this would perhaps have escaped, certainly eliminated. Here, for me, literature must be made so much impossible. The reassuring narration, schematic cuts out the beauty that is almost always in the cracks, in the streams.
Teresa Ciabatti is a writer and screenwriter. Author of many novels and stories, with the most loved she was a finalist at the Strega Prize. Photo: Claudio Sforza
The boss loved the doves, Céline read, wrote poems and novels. He considered himself against the Camorra. But who really is?
The literature must not give answers but multiply the questions, so is it right that doubts remain on the character of Misso: good or bad? Illuminated or ruthless head?
He also speaks of friendship as the highest form of love. He and Lovigino (Luigi Giuliano, another boss of the Camorra) were like brothers. Then what happened?
To what Misso says, and what the chronicles of the time say, the two collide on the idea of command. Misso does not want to take Naples, he has no intention of making war on Raffaele Cutolo – in fact he does not join the Neapolitan brotherhood against the new organized Cutolo Camorra. He wants to reorganize health, the district. He wants to bring well -being to his people. It comes to practice a kind of lace on the contrary: threatens those who continue to pay it. “How many merchants I sent to Cardarelli,” he says. The defense of the territory pushes him to the war, not to the taking of power.
Did he be afraid in meeting him? After all, it was a killer.
Peppe Misso was a criminal in Naples in the seventies, eighty, ninety. Today he is a collaborator of justice, “clarifying” he defines himself. It would be naive to think that in another place and in another time he, like anyone else, is the same person. The misso I met I is a kind, very intelligent seventy -seven man. Accepting to be told by me, filtered by my gaze, even deciding not to read the book once finished, was an act of generosity.
The theme of homosexuality is addressed. The gay children of the bosses “disappeared”. How did Misso behave with his?
During a trial, Peppe Misso, mocked by the enemies -“He has a gay son” -he stands up and says: “Yes, Mr. Judge, my son is gay, what’s wrong?”. In this way Misso changes the history of the Camorra. From that moment, children and gay family members of Boss, feminielli who previously disappeared, no longer disappear.
How did he bleed the boss’s life with his own so perfectly? It was not obvious.
The boss’s life with the life of any woman. That is, the exceptional with the ordinary, a criminal existence with a bourgeois existence. The meeting point is precisely in the waste material I said. There is the convergence that disturbs. A convergence that does not serve to make criminals good, but guilty of us, or at least inattentions. For example: in the novel the earthquake of Irpinia (1980) is told, the state funds distracted by the Camorra, entire countries destroyed and never reconstructed. What role did the state play? Why could all this have happened? In general Donnaregina is a assembly of reality and fiction. I real the marriage of Misso to which I went. I real my conversations with the nephew, Jesus of Nazareth. I remember my first question: “What do you deal with, Jesus?”
A very important theme of this book is the adolescent difficulty. The writer talks about the daughter and the role of a mother who has to learn a lot.
The writer resembles me but it’s not exactly me. So my daughter. Or in any case it is not important if the Camilla of the novel is really my daughter, as the sexuality of the boss’s son is not important. Instead, the malaise of a very young generation is important, 12-13 years old kids. This was confirmed by the data of the Bambin Gesù Hospital: in 2012, about 200 patients per year with a request for psychiatric consultancy, from 2022, 1800 per year. The protagonist immerses himself in the pain of teenagers like how he immerses himself in the criminal world. Worlds at the start very far from his. This happens in the novel: a change of gaze, an approach and together a discovery that first involves responsibility. Nobody is innocent, neither as an adult nor as a parent.
I woman © RESERVED REPRODUCTION