Shocking Ultra-violent generation

Roberto Saviano is an Italian like a fusion of Salman Rushdie and James Ellroy Savage. 
Just like Rushdie after the Iranian Fatwa, Saviano lives under police protection, as a result of death threats  issued against him following the publication of the first Gumarrah in 2006 which sold over 10million copies globally  and adapted into a feature film and television series. They came from neapolitan mafia aka Camorra, enraged by Saviano’s exposure  of their criminality.

Every Paranzino has his own vendetta and dream to pursue- dreams that might go beyond the laws of the gang. A new war may be about to break out in the city of cutthroat bargaining, ruthless, betrayal and brutal revenge. Saviano continues the story of the disillusioned boys of Forella, the paranzini  ready to give and receive kisses that leave a taste of blood.

Nicholas Fiorillo and his gang of children  his paranza control the squares of Frocella after their rapid rise to  power. But it isn’t certainly easy being at the top.

Savage Kiss emerges from the Pulp Fiction part of Saviano’s  imagination and it is a sequel to his 2016 novel The Piranhas, called “raw and shocking” by the New York Times Book Review, a crime thriller inspired by the real-life emergence of an ultra-violent generation of teenage hoodlums in Naples and captured the readers  with its tale of  raw criminal ambition told with “openhearted rashness”.  Savage Kiss draws on the skills of the translator Anthonuy Shugaar is the latest thrilling instalment from the brilliant Italian novelist. The novel’s portrait of Neapolitan teen culture is unconvincing. Nicolas and his tyro gangsters are obsessed by the Godfather and Scarface. Saviano’s imagery belongs to an outmoded world of dime novels. A deadly woman carries a “compact revolver”, the ladylike weapon of 1940s femmes fatales, while a young man is described approvingly as fighting like a bull.

Kiss: A Novel by Roberto Saviano, Translated by  Anthony Shugaar, Picador £14.99, 378 pages