The Camorra

About the Book

Ferdinando Russo, the premier dialect poet of Naples, invites Roger Morris, an American jounralist with Pulitzer, to the annual song festival at Piedigrotta. Morris arrives from Capri where he has researched a feature on the 1885 scandal on that island that almost overturned the Wilhemine government, forced the suicide of Alred Krupp, and led to the ruin of renowned artsist and poets who were accused of homo and lesbian illicit love in grott os. Morris lands at Naples beset by mobs of “popolani” heading in two directions, one to the the festa, and the other to a “Zumpata” or knife duel between two “Cammoriste.” The knife duel is impromtu and bizarre, the antagonists, both Dons of the Camorra have expressed themselves as a homo and a lesbian and the prize in the case of the lesbian quappo Don Mafalda, is the possession of the two adorable twins, Nennella and Nennino. Don Teresina, the “guappo” homosexual desires only Nennino. The winner takes two, or one of the twins. Russo misses Morris at the landing where Morris is mobbed by the locals heading for the Zumpata. Despite the fact that Russo asks his friends the “scugnizzi or street boys” of the city to find him, Morris is swept away by thousands. He is pummeled, suspected of being a police agent, has his pockets picked, his shoes trampled and relentlessly the fans of the “Zumpata” move him to the brink of a make shift arena. . .

About the Author

FRANK PALESCANDOLO is a novelist, poet, memoirist and translator. Under the sun of Sorrento, in the tradition of writers such as Norman, Douglas, Axel Munthe, Francis Marion Crawford, Harold Acton, and McKenzie, in that golden clime, he has written novels set in Italy: The Romantist, La Sirena Straniera, The Nose of San Januarius and Phallor Dionysis. Also he drew on his experiences as a member of the District Attorney’s Office of Brooklyn and became an exciting novelist of crime. His first novel Rumble on the Docks sold two million copies and was adapted for film. Forthcoming is his novel, The Last Beatnik and his translations of the poetry of Ferdinando Russo, the noted Neapolitan dialetical poet.