Marius Kociejowski The serpent coiled in naples Penguin Books

In recent years, Naples has become, for better or worse, the new ‘destination’ in Italy. While many of its more esoteric 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 Naples, is a travelogue, a meditation on mortality, and much else besides.
MARIUS KOCIEJOWSKI is a poet, essayist and travel writer. Among the books he has written are The Street Philosopher and the Holy Fool: A Syrian Journey, the sequel The Pigeon Wars of Damascus, and most recently A Factotum in the Book Trade. He lives in London, England where, until recently, he worked as an antiquarian bookseller.