The ground below Naples is in a constant state of flux. Tectonic plates rub together, creating tension that translates into the city’s chaotic, highly strung nature. This particularly appeals to Franco Supino, whose parents hail from the Neapolitan hinterland. The first-person narrative in Supino’s latest novel, “Spurlos in Neapel” (Lost in Naples), is that of a Swiss author visiting the city in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius.
Ostensibly, the author wants to get fitted for a suit at a “master tailor”. But he also has a second, secret objective in mind: to track down an elusive mafioso called Antonio Esposito. His periodic visits to the tailor involve working out the whereabouts of ’o Nirone, as Esposito is nicknamed on account of his dark complexion. The narrator, an upstanding gentleman, finds no shortage of locals peddling stories about ’o Nirone – the Camorra can always rely on Neapolitan hearsay and bravado to slip quietly into the shadows, a friend tells him. The mafia are part local heroes, part criminals and part myth.
Slowly but surely, the narrator gets closer to the mysterious ’o Nirone. But how to explain the dark skin of a “conventional” Camorrista? The narrator flips this question and wonders what would have happened to him had his parents stayed in or returned to Naples. The search for ’o Nirone subsequently turns into a retrospective of his own life. He not only remembers his parents’ early summer trips “back home”, but also the political clamour in Switzerland for Italian migrants to be sent “back where they came from”.
“Searching for your own reflection in a complete stranger is anything but a harmless game,” says the narrator, summing up the existential crux of the novel. The mafioso holds up a mirror to how the narrator’s own life could have been. “Spurlos in Neapel” is a cleverly composed story that flits between reality and fiction. Its autobiographical traits also tell of the fascination of Naples, the city of Maradona, Pino Daniele, Massimo Troisi. “How do the places we grow up in shape our lives?” the narrator asks. And how different would things have turned out had he grown up not in Solothurn but in Naples? Deep down, we could all ask ourselves a similar question.
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