Un a story of a company that redeems and redeems an entire territory. The Marotta & Cafiero publishing house is the symbol of a new Scampia, which regenerates itself while the Sails fall: the largest economic and popular building complex in the South, built with funds from the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno, collapses with bulldozers (there were seven buildings, 3 remain), while the neighborhood tries to be reborn, one book after another.
Expression of a new independent and terrona publishing house, which publishes Stephen King, Daniel Pennac, Günter Grass, but also Osvaldo Soriano, Antonio Skármeta, Raffaele La Capria, Ernesto Che Guevara, in an entirely ecological version (pages of recycled paper, printed with of soy, plasticized covers with corn starch), the Neapolitan publishing house participates in the urban and social rebirth of Scampia, involving the young people of the community. “In what used to be the largest shopping square in Europe today books are sold”: for Rosario Esposito La Rossa and his wife Maddalena Stornaiuolo, who twelve years ago received their historic publishing house as a gift from Antonio Marotta and Anna Cafiero of Posillipo, is a source of great pride. They recruited more than 80 young people from the neighborhood, engaging some of them in publishing activities. Others have been involved in various cultural projects (photography, writing, theater, cinematography), together with associations that have been active in the area for years. Thus was born Scugnizzeria.
«Look, it’s an impossible dream to realize, everyone told me when we chose to move the headquarters of our company from the richest neighborhood in Naples, Posillipo, to one of the most degraded. And yet, despite the general skepticism, today we are here, in Scampia, more and more integrated, more rooted in our territory », says the Neapolitan entrepreneur.
The first big hit dates back to some time ago, with the entry of the publishing house into the Mondadori distribution network, together with Rizzoli and Einaudi. «We are grateful for this to Orietta Fatucci of Einaudi Ragazzi. He immediately understood the scope of our project. So today we are present in over 2 thousand bookstores ». The second one? “It was during the 2020 lockdown. We were standing still, but, as my parents taught me, I was trying to raise the bar. It occurred to me to contact Stephen King. His agent told me right away that we wouldn’t have the money to close a deal with him. I bluffed a bit and we started a deal. And in the end Marotta & Cafiero published “Guns. Against weapons “. A book against violence made in Scampia! », Remarks Esposito La Rossa. «Now we print King and Pennac and all our authors in the Tonti Bookbinding, with which we have set up a new book center in the North of Naples. Where criminal alliances were formed, there are now companies that create new synergies ».
Book production mainly concerns civil fiction: stories from the South of the World, with particular reference to African, Arab, Serbian-Bosnian and Hispanic literature. Volumes of social, political and environmental commitment. “We devote a lot of attention to young authors, black writers, storytellers, the suburbs and the tribe of Naples. We specialize in the themes of ecology, anti-mafia, migration, historical revisionism and degrowth ”, explains the publisher.