The Serpent Coiled in Naples [Paperback]

A travelogue revealing the hidden stories of Naples.
 
In recent years Naples has become, for better or worse, the new destination in Italy. While many of its more unusual features are on display for all to see, the stories behind them remain largely hidden. In Marius Kociejowski’s portrait of this baffling city, the serpent can be many things: Vesuvius, the mafia-like Camorra, the outlying Phlegrean Fields (which, geologically speaking, constitute the second most dangerous area on the planet). It is all these things that have, at one time or another, put paid to the higher aspirations of Neapolitans themselves. Naples is simultaneously the city of light, sometimes blindingly so, and the city of darkness, although often the stuff of cliché. The boundary that separates death from life is porous in the extreme: the dead inhabit the world of the living and vice versa.The Serpent Coiled in Naplesis a travelogue, a meditation on mortality, and much else besides.
 Marius Kociejowskiis a poet, essayist, and travel writer. He is the author of several books, includingThe Street Philosopher and the Holy Fool: A Syrian Journey and The Pigeon Wars of Damascus.
 All over Naples I showed people a sentence that, for quick access, I wrote on the inside cover of my notebook, and which, if my source is correct, is a Sicilian proverb: ‘Mai temere Roma, il serpente se ne sta attorcigliato a Napoli’ (‘Never fear Rome, the serpent lies coiled in Naples’). Admittedly I seized upon the proverb before I ever got to Naples. It provided me with a title before I knew what the book’s contents would be. It was like being handed a physical law for which I had yet to find a theory, one that I’d make fit no matter what, there being something of the Jacopo in me. Would it be too much to say that by tenor alone the line carries its own inner truth? Sadly I’ve been unable to chase the l£!