ROME (AFP) — The author of a hard-hitting bestseller on the Camorra said he plans to flee Italy after learning that the Naples-area mafia wants him dead by Christmas.
"I'm thinking about leaving; they've robbed me of everything but my rage," Roberto Saviano, author of "Gomorrah", said in an interview with Italian television Wednesday, confirming an earlier news report.
Saviano had told the daily La Repubblica he would leave Italy "at least for awhile... I think I deserve a break."
La Repubblica reported on Tuesday that the Camorra's most powerful Casalesi clan, one of the most violent, had decided to kill Saviano and his bodyguard by Christmas because his book "has made a great deal of noise, created a mess."
Filmmaker Matteo Garrone's screen version of "Gomorrah" won second prize at the Cannes film festival in May and is in the running for an Oscar.
"I want a life, I want a home. I want to fall in love, to drink a beer in public," said Saviano, who has lived under police protection for two years.
"I want to walk in the sunshine and in the rain, and to see my mother without fear. I want to laugh and not talk about myself as if I were a patient with a terminal disease," he added.
Some 1.2 million copies of Saviano's book have sold in Italy.
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