The Suburra
2 total works
Fast-paced crime thriller set in Rome: Gomorrah meets House of Cards
Criminals on the rise and senior members of the Italian mafia clash in and around Rome over the backing of an urban development bill that promises to turn the seaside town of Ostia into a gambling paradise. The problems plaguing the political system of contemporary Italy are played out against this florid, cinematic background.
Before the end of Berlusconi’s days, a massive real estate development bill that will bury the city’s outskirts under tons of cement remains on the floor in the Italian parliament. Ostia, a small dot of a town on the coast, could become Italy’s equivalent of Las Vegas with the passing of this renewal project. With Italian MPs either in their pockets or forced to vote because of blackmail or the kidnapping of a loved one, the mafia is set to cash-in on the future of this seaside retreat. The local bosses of Ostia however, tired of staying in their place, feel entitled to a larger cut. When the son of a feared Ostia gangster is brutally stabbed and left lifeless on the streets, the safeties come off and all-out war is sparked. Each vote for the bill, will either be caused by blood or bought by way of bribery.
In the night of Rome, nothing is what it seems.
It’s all change in Rome. The new Pope, determined to bring radical reform to the Vatican, proclaims an extraordinary Jubilee year of Mercy. A new centre-left government replaces its disgraced predecessor, and sets about to rejuvenate the language of politics. And with crime lynchpin Samurai in jail, his protégé Sebastiano Laurenti attempts to establish himself as his designated successor. But he must reckon not only with a new generation of enterprising gangsters and racketeers—out to carve for themselves a slice of the profits and opportunities offered by the major public works planned for the Jubilee—but also with ambitious newly elected politician Chiara Visoni, and his own heart. Betrayals, alliances forged and broken, ambushes and infighting will inevitably alter the fragile political balance. As the sharks circle and the street-dogs fight, some tenuous hope endures, in the unlikely alliance of an incorruptible politician of the old left, all but forgotten, and a young bishop who refuses to play the Vatican’s power games. But it remains to be seen whether the long night of Rome can make room for redemption. Sharp and fast-paced, dark and taut, The Night of Rome is fiction that sails dangerously close to the wind of current events.