Roberto Saviano, author of a bestseller that opened the lid on a brutal Camorra clan, has taken up boxing to ''save himself'' from a life under continual threat.
''Boxing saves me from everything: life in a box, the impossibility of a love life, continual transfers from one hiding place to another,'' the 29-year-old told Naples daily Il Mattino.
''It's only in the ring that I feel my old self.
''In there, I'm no longer tense or irritable''.
Saviano revealed that he still feels vulnerable even with his round-the-clock police escort.
''I still get threats and I have to fight the thought that people close to me could betray me from one minute to the next''.
Despite his fame as the man who exposed the Clan dei Casalesi, a Camorra gang the interior ministry says has ''declared war on the state,'' Saviano said he feels people still question his credibility.
''Often people don't believe me, that's the irony of it''.
Saviano, whose 2006 book Gomorra (Gomorrah in English) has been a worldwide bestseller and been turned into a Cannes-winning film now bidding for the Oscars, said he had ''loved boxing since I was a kid''.
''My idol was a light heavyweight from Torre Annunziata called Pietro Aurino, a fantastic boxer''.
The physically slight Saviano told Il Mattino that he almost quit before he discovered the beneficial effects of the sport.
''I was all over the place on the first day and I could have called it quits there,'' said the former investigative journalist, who is training in an undisclosed gym on the outskirts of Naples.
After his detailed expose' of the Casalesi clan's criminal empire, Saviano received death threats from several of its chieftains.
But he still continued appearing on national talk shows to denounce the clan, which has led the Italian government to send the army to its fief after a string of murders.
Because of his courageous stance, Saviano is considered a national hero by important cultural figures such as Umberto Eco.
Gomorra, a play on Camorra, has been translated in 42 countries.
It has appeared on the best sellers lists in Germany, Holland, Spain, France, Sweden and Finland, among other countries.
The New York Times rated it one of the most important books of 2007 and The Economist included it among the hundred Books of the Year.
Saviano is the only Italian to have been placed in both lists.
Gomorra was made into a film directed by Matteo Garrone which won the second prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival and has been chosen as Italy's contender for the Best Foreign Film Oscar.
