The paranza of the children
aggression
Author Roberto Saviano
Publisher
Publishing house Felts
The children's paranza is the story of a group of teenagers determined to conquer Naples. A group of fire - a paranza, indeed. Little boys whirling on scooters and shooting wildly with semi-automatic pistols and AK47 control roads and neighborhoods. Little boys who are not afraid of prison or death, because they know that the only possibility available to them is to play their lives right away. "The money has those who take them, not who is waiting for someone to give them." Paranza is the name that comes from the sea: they are "the boats that hunt for fish to be deceived with the light". And as in trawling, the paranza goes fishing for people to be killed. Here it is told of kids darting life like fish, of adolescences "deceived by the light", and of dead that produce dead.
QLiber Editorial Review
Opinion inserted by C. U. B. 18 November, 2016
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Camorra 2.0
Naples that is beautiful to go crazy among the palaces, museums, art, shops, dialect, cheerfulness.
Tourists flee away from the tourist what is running behind, in the neighborhoods where they do not walk, in the suburbs, in the moment they have not crossed.
There is a reality of camorra which does not matter the date of birth, they are young people with uncertain future who choose the easiest way, or the only one they know, to get to Everything and Immitus.
Money and power: ambition of the little ones.
Girls who wouldn't even have the age to climb on the saddle roam on their mopeds in the centre, without rules, without fear. They swear faithfulness and will omit with a pact of blood that mixes on the wrists cut, they light a candle to Our Lady and obtain the sacred blessing of paranza. They speak through the jokes in memory of gangster films, learn to rule weapons on Youtube, they don't fear death if they dignifiedly wrestle in battle. Extortion, shop, robbery, murder.
It took me ten years to become a child, I put a second to shoot you in my face.
His supporters are calm and the detractors relax, Roberto Saviano does not propose non-fiction with this last book, but narrative. So it cannot be copied. With his talented pen, he has written a passionate and exciting novel, very realistic, tragic, frightening.
From the unstoppable pass the river flows in the middle of the unfortunate lives of its protagonists, with the vigour and unconsciousness and ambition of youth. Galoppa to a tight rhythm whipped by the shampoo of the (including very understandable) Neapolitan dialect that characterizes, revives, leads into the ward.
Shake the trams reader that kidnapped by the mixture of filling and form disorientated neck strap, away from the security of the paper and' thrown away at breathtaking in the middle world. A surreal reality halfway between reading and living life, invented characters embedded in an existing social situation.
Today, typing on Google "La paranza dei bambini" ("The Children's Paranza") gives results that can only be traced back to Saviano, here we would be delighted. However, if the word "Woodcock" or "De Falco" is added next door, the extremes of the lips lose their gravitational support, the results are chronicle.
I freed the author from the bibliographic rigour imposed in non-fiction, the starting point comes from the reading of the files of an investigation conducted by the above mentioned magistrates, which last June resulted in forty-three convictions of Camorra.
A beautiful horrible book, good reading.
Useful hints
a gear that from sea becomes land
Paranza children are not children. They are people for whom convenience is the only rule, the value of life is nothing and the only thing that counts is to enrich and be a winner. There is no failure, as Saviano recounts in an interview with Fazio, the boys see the efforts of their parents and their poor conditions (but not miserable) and know that the state, legality will not allow them to become someone, They don't want to earn a thousand euros per month through legal channels, but they want to earn 300 euros, knowing that in the future they will find themselves running entire shopping centres and being able to afford a life full of luxuries for them and their parents. They don't think about what would happen if their parents had to pay the "protection" (the lace) to some clans, they think instead that they, who make others pay for the "protection", have understood how it is more like the world than their parents, to be wiser, more adults, more men and more fathers than them, because it was the paranzini who started to' bring bread' home. In this novel, the figure of the parents is also fundamental, they support them - if not immediately they will find themselves doing so in the future especially after they have been wronged, after they have appreciated the new condition of life with all the comforts that their children allow him.
The protagonist of the story, Nicolas' or Maraja, wants to become a boss of paranza, he wants to create a paranza with his most trusted friends. But you can't found a paranza without making any dead people, you can't found it without weapons and you can't found it if you don't earn your money in the street squares. References are often made to' the Prince' of Macchiavelli, because Nicolas finds inspiration from this work. It is a story of violence, inspired by real and horrible facts. Justice has a dimension of its own, there are rules of honour, not written, but which MUST be respected:"Nicolas stood up and began to travel around him. He walked slowly. The Archangel never moved, he never did when he wanted to give the impression of having eyes even behind his head. If someone behind you and your eyes begin to follow him, it means that you are afraid. And whether you follow him or not, if the knife must arrive, the same comes. If you don't look, if you don't turn around, instead, don't show fear and make your murderer an infamous one who hits behind him.
It's a completely hidden world that few people know, but it's there and that strikes the whole world and there's a need to know it, to get acquainted with it, to learn and to know each other and it's for this reason to appreciate, support, admire and imitate a character like Roberto Saviano.
The language used for the dialogues is Neapolitan dialect (and it made me smile a lot)
Machiavelli's mixed fried food grows and kills
Forcella district of Naples. A group of teenagers, all still under the age of 15-16 spring on their shoulders, cultivate the extreme dream of becoming uncontested bosses of the Neapolitan city. It's a pity that "In Naples there are no paths of growth: we are born already in reality, inside, do not discover it slowly.", and that this reality does not involve study, work and sacrifices, but rather anticipates semi-automatic pistols, AK47, murders and contrachromicides. The head of the newborn clan is Nicolas, better known as' Maraja' because of his closeness to the chicest place in Posillipo and tireless admirer of the Prince of Machiavelliano, and it is he who embodies this unbridled ambition in a morbid way, because "The deeds of a warrior pass from mouth to mouth, make news and then make legend. There is only the present, as cheeky as the fish of paranza and dominated by bullying and vicarication, and the terrible end result can only lead to a sharp dichotomy between' fottuti' and' fottitori', where every ethical and moral co-ordinate will fail and where the climb to power will be brutal and without any possibility of appeal.
We are in front of a novel with an extraordinary socio-psycho-pedagogical characterization, in which the reversal of values represents the main demarcation key for the analysis of the text. Faced with the weak and silent families and institutions that are absent and subscribed to tacit consent, the educational path of the new generation is abandoned to itself and lacks any solid and calibrated reference point. Almost the disdain for those who earn their bread with the sweat of the forehead and with the toil, because "the end justifies the means" perfectly sums up their desire for everything and immediately, in defiance of illegality, imprisonment, respect for others and death.
Through a sustained and cadenced rhythm and a use of the dialect simply perfect, Saviano shows us an authentic cross-section with realistic bloody strength: in a world where only the law of the strongest exists, fierce and ruthless beings move, who do not look and seek a ransom for their future. However, for a present who speaks, spends it, overtakes it and demands it, there is no lack of the diabolical counteraxis, because, as the paranza of the sea indicates the boats that go fishing for fish to be deceived with light, the paranza of the mainland is the underworld that attracts the new levers promising fame and easy money, and then sacrifices them as goods of exchange to the minimum need. And the tragic conclusion seems to revive Bonini and De Cataldo's Roma: irredeemable and inexplicable.
"Look inside. Look inside deeply, but if you don't feel ashamed you're not really doing it. And then ask yourself if you're a fuctute or fottitore.
The limit is the sky
Saviano is launched into fictional literature without abandoning his peculiarity as a writer of inquiry, giving us a story of fantasy that does not detach itself in any way from a difficult reality that the author denounces with the usual courage, the usual lucidity, the great love for his land of which continues to highlight the problems not to denigrate it (as stupidly and superficially someone keeps on declaring) but, on the contrary, to help fight the evil that afflicts it. It does so with a fine style, finding the right balance between a prose of first order and a juvenile jargon full of colorful dialectal terms, without losing elegance even during the bloodiest scenes and in front of the most trivial vulgarity. In one of the most difficult neighbourhoods in Naples, a group of teenagers who grew up in the myth of the great mafia, real or cinematographic bosses who are, dream of becoming powerful, feared and, of course, rich. We are in Forcella and they are Briato', Tucano, Dentine, Dragon', Lollipop, Moscio Fish, Stavodicendo, Drone and Biscottino. To captain Nicolas Fiorillo, called Maraja. Small delinquents who have been following wrong models since childhood, who learn to shoot by watching video tutorials on the internet, who are flooding their speeches with quotes taken from films such as "The Camorist" or "Scarface". Boys who grew up too quickly, in a city in which it is necessary to "be born learned", in which reality does not know it slowly but we are born inside, in streets where a look is a sign of challenge, is invasion, a manifestation of power; where parents and teachers have no authority, they are seen as bankruptcy forced to swallow to earn in a month what with the shop, extortion, robberies you can earn in a few minutes. The real school is the road, it is there that you can learn everything you need to become someone. The forces of law and order seem totally at the mercy of criminality, in sharp numerical inferiority, with a ridiculous arsenal in comparison to those of the Camorristi and with difficulty the money to put gasoline in their panthers. And when they succeed in arresting someone I am whistled, insulted and crushed by a mass in solidarity with criminals. In this context, Nicolas and his gang are barcamenano dedicated to activities that are not legitimate, allowing them to buy designer clothes and shoes, latest generation smartphones, jewelry, oysters, caviar and champagne rivers. But in Maraja and partners all this is not enough, they want to have power, they want respect for everyone, they want to arouse fear in anyone who crosses them on their own path. Then just work for this or that boss! We need to build an independent "paranza", not belong to anyone, not to be under anything. "The limit is the sky. But how can children who are not yet under 18 years of age be able to do it? Nicolas clever mind, ruthless and endowed with remarkable intelligence that unfortunately chased in the wrong direction, has very clear ideas. There is only one answer: with terror. "Children called them and children were really children. And as those who had not yet begun to live, they were not afraid of anything, they considered the old ones already dead, already buried, already finished. The only weapon they had was the ferinity that the puppies of man still keep. instinctively acting pet animals. They show their teeth and railing, enough to hunt under the people in front of them. Becoming ferocious, only in this way would those who still intrigued respect take them into consideration. Kids yes, but with balls. Create turmoil and reign over that: disorder and chaos for a kingdom without coordinates.
A punch in the stomach
This book by Saviano has the harshness and painfulness of a punch on the stomach, because it confronts us with a social reality that we would like to deny, considering it a nightmare, a novelist's fantasy, but that the chronicles of the crime in Campania oblige us to recognize as true.
The form of the novel, which allows you to focus on the personality of all the children who make up the "paranza", the cancellation in them of any positive value, the distortion in the models of life to which they refer, the absence of antibodies suitable to combat social deviance, adds tension and drama. As in "Gomorrah" the book is based on knowledge of social reality and finds support and confirmation in a judicial action that, a few months before its publication, led to the conviction of 43 young defendants in the sentence at first instance.
In the vacuum created in the Neapolitan Camorra, after the trials that have brought to prison or put under house arrest the most important pieces of the various clans, a group of children who have as social models the careers of the chiefs of the camorra, as objectives the rapid enrichment and control of a part of the territory, seeks their own affirmation as a group of autonomous fire, with fierce actions.
Saviano uses a combination of narrative and non-fiction to put us in front of an anguish social situation, but unfortunately real, because the pages of Neapolitan black chronicle speak to us of "stretched out", the empty shootings (when it's okay) that serve to affirm the intimidating power of "parances", of assaults and murders of young people.
Certainly this is only the black part of a city in which exasperating and exasperating contradictions coexist; an unpleasant part, but more real than the glossy and oleographic image that was given in a recent television version of "I bastardi di Pizzofalcone", certainly more appreciated by the first citizen of Naples, who reacted with incomprehensible heaviness to the publication of this book.
In the Saviano style, he tries to recreate the real language of Neapolitan children, a dialect burdened by interjections that make a cruelly realistic narration even less pleasant.
Same murmur mammary
Nicholas is little more than a child who lives in a family like many others, father teacher and mother who owns a small shop, a family who does everything to make children live a normal life far from the street. But Nicholas lives in a difficult reality, a neighborhood where criminality comes from every corner, so soon he too begins to feel the call of power and easy money and puts us a moment to finish in a bad ride with his friends. The rest of the book is a continuous escalation carried out by these children: starting with acts of bullying, robbery, from obtaining a weapon to selling, up to murder, all things that are unthinkable for normal people, let alone for them who are little more than children.
Saviano offers us a novel that is to say the least realistic, it could be very well the biography of some camorrist boss. The social reality described is, to say the least, depressing, it shows us how much in certain environments the camorrist mentality and also the acceptance of certain criminal behaviour is such a normal and deep-rooted thing, which raises the question of whether it is a phenomenon that we will ever be able to defeat. These children aspire to become rich, to live in the most unbridled luxury, to be feared and respected, and if this is to be achieved by becoming criminals, what is the problem? On the contrary, better! The chambermen of the area are their idols and are venerated as gods on earth.
Fortunately, these are realities that are far removed from most of our lives, although perhaps they are closer than we believe and this does, to say the least, cause fear. Saviano does a portrait of a sad reality but, whatever it says, in my opinion he doesn't speak badly of Naples, indeed his denunciation is also a way to spur people to open their eyes and stop denying evidence. We isolate these people, let us show that the mentality can change and that power is not in their hands, but to do this we need to start with children, with the new generations that have to grow up and learn to condemn crime that lies around them rather than considering it a normal thing.
The novel seemed to me a little slow and repetitive in some points, the fact that the sentences were written halfway in Neapolitan gives realism to the story, but for me that I do not know this dialect at all, has made the reading a bit cumbersome.
In general it is a book that is in some ways shocking and hallucinating, as well as the reality it describes but for this very reason it has to be read, and the bitterness that it leaves you in the end, is something that is not easily forgotten.
GENTE DI MARE
Paranza is an unusual word, used especially in coastal towns, it has to do with fishing, with boats, it is a term for seafarers.
It identifies a particular type of boat that usually takes the sea in pairs with a similar vessel to implement a precise fishing strategy, and therefore the term identifies both the means and the action of fishing.
The paranza, fishing with paranza, takes place at night, when the fish leave the seabed and dens, and is facilitated by the use of large lamps that attract the flock, deceiving it, making it flutter a horizon and an ideal habitat, leading instead in the center of the nets for easier capture.
Sometimes, however, the catch is also referred to as fish, but not the main prey, namely squids, mullet, sea bass and bass, or small tuna intended to make a fine show on the fish market stalls, but the small and very small fishes, for size and growth phase, the molluscs, the tiny crustaceans still without exoskeleton that remain entangled on the bottom of the net, trapped by the dragging on the seabed.
More often, they are a separate market, they represent the thinnest part of the booty of the working day, banal and tasteless.
Cooked one by one in fact, they don't even have a particular taste; instead, prepared in frying together they all create a small delicacy, called "frying of paranza", as proof once again of the ancient saying "union is strength".
All that has just been said is put on a par with Roberto Saviano in his latest book "La paranza dei bambini" (The Children's Paranza). A book that is bitter, desolate and desolate, well written, and that explains directly, better than any socio-political treatises, the unhealthy influence, the ruin and abuse of the Camorra against certain difficult Neapolitan youth, already from childhood and adolescence.
In fact, Saviano gives the prints a novel that describes the ascent and the existential course, unfortunately in an exclusively criminal character, of a group of ten children from Naples, born and raised in the neighbourhoods of the city where the camorra and the deviant mafia mentality is most endemic and rooted.
The ten children, each identified by curious, unusual, sometimes funny nicknames, such as Maraja, Lollipop, Dentine, Briatò, Mosquito, Dragò, etc.., are like the small fishes on the bottom of the net, taken one by one in appearance do not count much, in reality they are good, they do not even know how good there is in them, just think that put together they can give rise to a delicious frying, a condensate of innocence, intelligence, vitality and civil consistency.
On the other hand, it is the adults who speaks of malpractice, who, unscrupulous in any way, deceive the groupâs innocence and stimulate its worst aspects.
The problem is all in an unhealthy society that attracts them by dazzling them with the light of easy enrichment, trapping them in the network of malafety and common delinquency exploiting the educational, motivational and affective deficiencies of these small fish.
Small fishes little more than children, fragile preadolescent and intensely tender, skillfully traversed by sharks as fishermen, sharks who, even from housekeepers, prisons and the harsh regime of 41 bis, are still able to show themselves as guides, as examples to imitate and to which they are increasingly resembling for criminal cunning, shrewdness, and bloody cruelty.
They, the bosses, the chiefs, the most criminal mammasters, plagiate and militarize the children with weapons, first equipping them with authentic old-fashioned irons that barely work, and then in an incredible criminal escalation with the most modern and deadly machine guns and death tools.
To provide itself with an invaluable means of mass terror for intimidating purposes, of presence and control of the territory, the paving, the raids with shootings that force unfortunate passers-by indifferently guilty and innocent to lie down to escape the stray bullets.
In this way, the bosses can continue with impunity even at a distance, even from the prison, to command the zones of influence, weave their shady trades, exploiting without any moral hesitation the youngsters of the paranza, arming them, managing them, blanding them, so that a real group of fire is formed by the children, leveraging on their innate naivety, assuring them power, charisma and immunity, almost as if they were really bosses on a par with them. Taking advantage also of an alleged honour deriving from a strict custom of loyalty and fidelity to the bosses, demonstrated by the continuous intercalarism:"addà murì mammà", that my mother dies if I don't say the truth, if I am not faithful to the group of fire, sanctioning this bond with picturesque rituals of initiation to the criminal system, ancient and fascinating together, especially in the minds of the little ones.
Nicolas and his hell
A novel in which Saviano brings out a very serious and horrific problem, that is, children who instead of living their fairy-tale age carefree and laying the foundations for an important future, on the contrary, are devoted to malaffair and inhuman trafficking and behaviour. The protagonist is Nicolas, called "o maraja", a sixteen-year-old son of a good family who, for his frequentations, or for his particular character, travels an incredible ascent towards affiliation and then the affirmation in the ambit of underprivilegedness. Nicolas only surrounds himself with his childhood friends, teenagers too, and the vicissitudes and vicissitudes narrated in the book are absurd and inconceivable x the age of the protagonists and the cruelty inherent, but so much.
I conclude by extrapolating a passage that struck me, we talk about a cruise in the Gulf of Naples made by these guys after extorting money with deception (p296):
.... the captain had thought that those children were the examples of Neapolitan rich kids who stuck Instagram with exaggerated images. Pampered and full of money they didn't know how to spend. I soon changed my mind when he saw them arrive in the group. And he no longer had any doubts when, off the coast, at a hint of what was clearly supposed to be the head, they pulled out all the guns and began to overflow the water. They were shooting dolphins. Their girlfriends had tried to protest:"They're so beautiful", but it was seen that they were actually proud of their guys, who could afford to shoot at the people they wanted, even those gorgeous creatures".
Neapolitan criminal novel
Maraja is, at the same time, her nickname "battle name" and obsession.
Because the New Marajah is the place set on the Gulf of Naples where, between vaguely exotic furnishings, flow liters of champagne... and the "important" people. Nicholas Fiorillo - this is his name - is convinced that the unconditional availability of a privee in that place, for himself and his friends, is the starting point to become a real boss, feared and revered.
Nicholas Fiorillo is a child who wants to think as a man. Like his companions, by the unlikely but indelible nicknames: Dentine, Briato', Moscio Fish, Drone, Tucano, Stavodicendo, Lollipop, Dragon'.... Children who want to think as men. Children of the paranza.
The frying of the paranza is such when everything that ends up in your mouth can chew it without identifying it. Paranza frying is the waste of fish, only in the whole finds its flavor. Reaching the exact taste is the battle that takes place on the iron of the frying pan, olive juice, oil, the soul of wheat, flour, sea juice, fish. You win when everything is in perfect balance, and when in the mouth the paranza has a unique flavor.
The flour is the breastplate, the oil is the baptism of the fire, the pan is the risk, and Naples is a mouth ready to savor, or chew.
The perfect balance, the unique taste, is the ultimate goal of Nicholas Fiorillo, what is needed for the paranza of children, small fish who want to grow up, to be able to spread in their neighborhood, then in the city and throughout the world. Handling guns. Exercising in the "paving". Dealing with Roma slums, Chinese anticai under Mount Vesuvius, even the authority of the Casalese.
They have weapons, a den, the desire to emerge. But more than anything else, to look at them, they have the unconsciousness: they are ready to humiliate anyone, because they do not really know dignity; they are willing to die at ten years old, as can be so only those who have not yet understood what life is.
Something of "Il signore delle mosche", much of "Romanzo criminale": the district of Forcella is a new Magliana; the Romanesque slang has taken the syncopated rhythm of the Neapolitan dialect "embattled" (as the author defines it); the climb towards domination dresses other forms but remains identical in its senselessness.
Roberto Saviano's latest novel loses something original compared to previous works. But it preserves the typical contents of the Neapolitan writer, adding a precise alarm: the average age of crime is drastically decreasing. And this means that, in a certain geographical area, an entire generation is entirely lost, with no chance of recovery.... And who can tell me how much this area will extend year after year?
Some of them will kill. Someone will be killed, or perhaps crippled for life in response to a "rude" one (the one who dared to aspire instead of those who now command). Someone else will say,"but they kill each other. And "they" are children of ten years old.... frying paranza, in one way or another.
