Napoletani. Irripetibili, irriducibili e incorruttibili

Unrepeatable, irreducible and incorruptible: three strong adjectives, and on the face of it even a little surreal, for a great tribe which – as Pier Paolo Pasolini maintained – instead of living in the desert or the savannah, like the Tuareg and the Beja, lives in the belly of a great city by the sea. A book about men and women who, for better or worse, through charisma, fame or misfortune, have become part of the soul of Naples, themselves merging into the ahistorical dimension of a city little inclined to change. Unchanging and mysterious, «come una Pompei che non è stata mai sepolta», as Captain Curzio Malaparte explained to Colonel Jack Hamilton in one of the finest and most intense dialogues of “La pelle”. Certainly irreverent and indecipherable, for too long accustomed to serving and to commanding, to complaining, to laughing, to shouting, to mocking.

Giorgio Ascarelli, Enrico Caruso, Benedetto Croce, Eduardo De Filippo, Enrico De Nicola, Raffaele Cutolo, Corrado Ferlaino, Achille Lauro, Sophia Loren and Totò: people very different from one another, who in their diversity and, at times, glaring contrast sum up well the thousand faces of that Neapolitan identity which, rightly or wrongly, intellectuals, provocateurs and preachers have often invoked. Nine men and one woman, whose stories represent a particular and significant cross-section of that tribe to which Pasolini had given the name of “Neapolitans”