Naples was known for crime and garbage mountains. Today the southern Italian city is self-confident. This also has something to do with their football team, which wins the league title for the first time in 33 years – for the first time without their great hero Diego Armando Maradona.
Maurizio De Giovanni has achieved what many writers only dream of. His latest crime novel has topped the bestseller lists in Italy, the main state television channel, Rai 1, is showing four TV series based on his books simultaneously, and his plays are being staged across the country. Today he is the most popular literary voice in Naples, and interest in the Neapolitan storyteller is also growing internationally. The 65-year-old writes about everything that moves his hometown – about social problems, political intrigues, the mafia, about the great historical and cultural heritage and of course about football. The writer is so ubiquitous in the local media that he is teasingly dubbed “the secular Pope of Naples”.