You are born into it or marry in. Loyalty is absolute, bloodshed revered and you kill or go to your grave before betraying The Family. This code of omertà is how the 'Ndrangheta became the world’s most powerful mafia. The Good Mothers is the story of the women who broke the silence.You are born into it or marry in. Loyalty is absolute, bloodshed revered and you kill or go to your grave before betraying The Family. This code of omertà is how the 'Ndrangheta became the world’s most powerful mafia. The Good Mothers is the story of the women who broke the silence.We live in their buildings, work in their companies, shop in their stores, eat in their restaurants and elect politicians they fund. Founded more than 150 years ago by shepherding families in the toe of Italy, the ’Ndrangheta is today the world’s most powerful mafia, with a crushing presence in southern Italy, a market-moving size in global finance and a reach that extends to fifty countries around the world. And yet, remarkably, few of us have ever heard of it.The ’Ndrangheta’s power rests on a code of silence, omertà, enforced by a claustrophobic family hierarchy and murderous misogyny. Men and boys rule. Girls are married off as teenagers in arranged clan alliances. Beatings are routine. A woman who is ‘unfaithful’ – even to a dead husband – can expect her sons, brothers or father to kill her to erase the ‘family shame’.In 2009, when abused wife Lea Garofalo ‘disappears’ after giving evidence against her mafiosi husband, prosecutor Alessandra Cerreti realises the ’Ndrangheta’s bigotry may be its great flaw. The key to bringing down this criminal empire is to free its women and allow them to speak out and testify. When Alessandra finds two collaborators inside Italy’s biggest crime families, she must persuade them to cooperate, and save themselves and their children.The stakes could not be higher. Alessandra is fighting to save a nation. The mafiosi are fighting for their existence. The women are fighting for their lives. Not all will survive.‘Perry has ably pieced together a number of remarkable stories. His focus … [in his] fast-moving book … is on the women who, sickened by years of abuse and bullying, decided that they would take no more’ Caroline Moorehead, Times Literary Supplement‘The highly compelling story of the women who dared to break omertà, the Mafia code of silence. In fully developing his subjects, Perry shows remarkable empathy for their plights. An impossible-to-put-down page-turner’ Kirkus‘The painful and dangerous process of these women’s rebellion against the family makes a gripping and heart-breaking narrative’ Clare Longrigg, Observer‘Both harrowing and heartening … and told with Alex Perry's usual verve’ Tom Burgis, Financial Times‘A brilliant read’ Devika Bhat, The Times‘This is something special’ Nicholas Schmidle, New Yorker‘One female prosecutor in Italy believed that she could recruit mistreated, abused, and discarded Mafia women could help bring down the organization. She was right. This story is bananas’ Lauren Katzenberg, New York TimesAlex Perry is a correspondent, author and writer for television and film. Author of Falling Off the Edge, Lifeblood and The Rift, Perry lived and worked for fifteen years in Asia and Africa, specialising in investigations into conflict, corruption and organised crime for TIME, Newsweek and others. Perry now lives in Hampshire, England.• Comparative titles: John Dickie's Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia (150k across formats), Mafia Republic (10k across formats), Snowing in Bali by Kathryn Bonella (12k across formats). Gomorrah: Italy’s Other Mafia (80k copies) by Roberto Saviano. The GOOD MOTHERS will serve as an updated Secrets of the Life and Death: Women and the Mafia by Renate Siebert, published in 1996.• Global reach of the ‘Ndrangheta mafia: exceeded €53bn or £44bn of turnover in 2014 – more than McDonald’s and Deutsche Bank combined. Drug trafficking brought in an estimated €24.2bn, and illegal garbage disposal, earned it €19.6bn. The southern Italian mafia earned the equivalent of 3.5% of Italy's gross domestic product (GDP) last year. The 'Ndrangheta has 400 key "operatives" in 30 countries, but its activities involve as many as 60,000 people worldwide. Earnings via extortion and usury was of €2.9bn pa, with embezzlement at €2.4bn pa and gambling €1.3bn pa.• As well as exposing many publicly unknown practices of the Italian mafia, the choice of women as central characters is a fresh take on the world of crime. This book will appeal to the avid audiences of The Sopranos, Narcos, The Good Wife, Breaking Bad, and Weeds, all of which depict women's role in supporting or taking down men who indulge in illegal activities.• The book has been optioned by Tessa Ross Associates and will be showing in theatres as Mafia Mothers. Tessa Ross hopes to make a movie of the story of Lea and Denise Garofalo and a multi-series TV production, in the style of The Wire, using the material relating to Giuseppina Pesce and Maria Conchetta Cacciola.• Alex Perry has worked at TIME, Newsweek, and other publications in the UK and US. He has an array of contacts that will enable The GOOD MOTHERS to receive considerable coverage. In this book he tells this gripping story that has never been told in the English language.Competition: The Godfather;Billion Dollar Whale;Legacy;Peaky Blinders;Handstands in the Dark;Killing Pablo;Kleptopia;McMafia;History of the Italian Mafia;Costa Nostra. Mario Puzo;Tom Wright;Michael Gillard;Carl Chinn;Jane Godley;John Preston;Mark Bowden;Tom Burgis;Neil Woods;Jane Mayer;Misha Glenny;John Dickie
Publicat de: HarperCollins Publishers