“Right now the most difficult task for me is not writing a new book, but reclaiming my life,” he said, slumped on a couch.

“I don’t have a home... I move constantly. My family lives in northern Italy. All the people I knew in the past have distanced themselves, my girlfriends, everybody, everybody, everybody.”

Anti-mafia investigators praise Saviano’s courage in trumpeting their struggle to the world.

“I admire him because he created a new genre that has greatly widened the audience,” said Antonio Laudati, a top Justice Ministry official who led major Camorra prosecutions in his native Naples. “This was an issue that primarily interested specialists, prosecutors, journalists. Saviano broke open a new front. He informed the man on the street. He turned our prosecution files into literature.”

The book has brought death threats, smear campaigns and even lawsuits by the Camorra and its allies. Last week, there were new rumblings. A longtime protected witness who was a kingpin of the Casalesi, as the gang from Saviano’s hometown, Casal di Principe, is known, reportedly told an investigator about talk of a plot to kill Saviano before Christmas.

During the interview at his publisher’s office, Saviano took a phone call from a friend in law enforcement — a disturbing update about a band of fugitives blamed for the machine-gun killings of six Africans in Castelvolturno; an apparent message over drug turf that caused the Government to dispatch 500 soldiers to the region.

“They have discovered that the hit team that is roving in the province of Campania has bought a detonator,” he said. “So all of us who have security details are concerned. Because bombs are used to attack security details. This is a group that wants to die.”

... contd.