A worldwide bestseller about the Naples Mafia is now being turned into a film.
The book, Gomorra by Roberto Saviano, is so raw and revealing that Saviano has been put under 24-hour police guard to protect him from the Camorra.
In a November 25 review, the New York Times called it ''the most important book to come out of Italy in years''.
It portrays ''an alien land of doped-up child soldiers, gun-toting clan women, illegal Chinese immigrants, sweatshops, drug smuggling, garbage and cement,'' the NYT said.
The film version has been entrusted to one of the leaders of a new wave of Italian cinema, Matteo Garrone.
Garrone, 39, sprang to prominence in 2002 with The Embalmer, a dark tale of obsession and murder involving a southern taxidermist.
The Roman director says he's seeking to bring to life Saviano's protagonists while avoiding a black-and-white picture of the troubled Italian city.
''I don't want to play the moralist, splitting good from evil. Don't expect a denunciation or an expose','' Garrone said after the first unedited snippets from the film were presented at a cinema fest here.
''The focus will be on filling in the characters that Saviano's book outlines in pen strokes. Probing their humanity is what intriques me,'' he said.
The original title of the film was to be Six Brief Stories but Garrone will now be using the title of Saviano's book, which is a play on the word Camorra.
Much of the film will focus on a man who makes toxic waste disappear, one of the many illegal activities of the Camorra.
One of the book's striking claims is that the Italian economy would not have been healthy enough to join the euro zone if big northern businesses hadn't sold their waste to the Camorra on the cheap.
The waste disposal kingpin, Franco, is played by Naples-born actor Toni Servillo, 49, known to international audiences for the 2004 art-house hit The Consequences of Love.
While concentrating on showing what makes Saviano's characters tick, Garrone won't be shying away from the violence the Camorra uses to rule the districts of Naples around the city's huge port.
''It'll be a war film - a war taking place in 2007 just 150km south of Rome,'' he said.
