What does sex represent for the mafia? It is a question that few people ask and which instead hides a set of facets and realities that help to better understand these criminal organizations. An answer is given by Roberto Saviano with his new novel, “We two belong to each other”, in bookstores from April 16th. The famous Neapolitan writer and journalist offers in the 272 pages published by Fuoriscena an attentive look at the smallest detail on the indissoluble intertwining of sex, feelings and betrayals that characterizes the existence of the great mafia bosses.
The title was not chosen by chance: “We two belong together”, in fact, it is nothing more than an extract from a letter from Laura Bonafede to Matteo Messina Denaro, a boss who used to hide his true identity from the women he frequented during his own inaction. Saviano’s goal is to go where no one has ventured, highlighting dynamics that are in some ways surprising and which have often also caused the ruin of mafia members. The novel is characterized by a series of stories in which unthinkable emotions emerge. There is space for the feeling between two queens of Chilean drug trafficking, but also for the madly in love of the Camorra boss Paolo Di Lauro for a girl who broke his heart and the sentimental vicissitudes of Messina Denaro. There is also the coming out of a ‘Ndrangheta killer, a high-risk situation as it is easy to imagine. The resulting whole is varied to say the least, tinged with romanticism with hints of feracity. After all, sex, love and betrayal are delicate and often thorny topics, and in mafia organizations they become so to the nth degree.
Precisely these relationships are not negligible parentheses in the history of the mafia because they have also contributed to creating or destroying real crime empires. “We two belong to each other” comes out exactly twenty years after “Gomorrah”, the book with which Saviano revolutionized the way of describing the mafia reality. Two decades later, the judicial report has the unmistakable style of the Neapolitan author, the result of very in-depth historical research. His new novel shows men with hearts of stone dealing with women who are not simply companions of the boss on duty: their role evolves, they are victims, but also executioners and even murderers and bringers of salvation.
