Mafia News

For followers of crime drama, the word mafia might produce images of unspeakable violent acts and gun battles in the streets of major U.S. cities, reminiscent of scenes from “The Godfather” movies.

However, there is a different mafia functioning quietly yet successfully in the United States, and its operations could possibly be affecting every American either directly or indirectly.

This mafia, driven more by the desire to acquire money rather than territory, is collectively known as the Russian mafia, although those involved are from other post-Soviet countries as well, according to a new book by Joe Serio. Continue Reading »

Sicilian Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano arrives at a police station in Palermo. Photograph: Reuters

The letters of jailed Cosa Nostra boss Bernardo Provenzano are full of insights into his leadership style. The result could be a how-to manual for company directors. Clare Longrigg opens the mafiosi’s management handbook Continue Reading »

Pages: 1 2

It’s an offer you can’t refuse if you’re visiting Italy on holiday this year – a tourist guidebook on the Mafia. The 55-page pocketbook hit the streets this week and they have been flying off the shelves.

Author Augusto Cavadi, 58, says his aim is to explain “everything you ever wanted to know about the Mafia but were afraid to ask.” Continue Reading »

Real-life tragedies stand out in an anthology of Italian writing on the Mob
Mafia and Outlaw Stories – from Italian Life and Literature – translated and edited by Robin Pickering-Iazzi – University of Toronto Press, 180 pages, $24.95

In this absorbing collection of tales about the Mafia in Sicily, most taken from Italian fiction but a significant few from the personal experiences of real people, “life” emerges as the winner over “literature.” Measured in drama and in acts of remarkable bravery, the stories told in their own words by a handful of Sicilian women who dared to resist the Mafia are far more compelling and tragic than anything dreamed up by the novelists and short story writers. Continue Reading »

A BESTSELLING author forced to live under police protection after publishing an exposé of the Naples mafia is expected to run for parliament in a challenge to Silvio Berlusconi, the billionaire tycoon and former prime minister.

Roberto Saviano, 28, whose book Gomorrah: Italy’s Other Mafia sold 1m copies in Italy and prompted several death threats, has been asked to join the slate led by Walter Veltroni, leader of the centre-left Democratic party and Berlusconi’s main rival in the general election on April 13-14. Continue Reading »

AUTHOR Joe Pieri’s latest book ‘The Octopus’ puts the spotlight on the Mafia and charts the rise of the rise of the organisation from its days as a way for Sicilian communities to help each other to its reincarnation as an infamous society of organised criminals. Continue Reading »