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Terms
A Camorrist is a member of the Camorra, an Italian crime syndicate and secret society dating back to the 1600s. The Camorra originated in Naples, where My Brilliant Friend takes place, and Camorrists have a domineering, violent presence in Lenù and Lila’s neighborhood in the 1950s. In the novel, Camorrists like the Solaras family tend to take part in illegal or otherwise disreputable activities like gambling, exploitative moneylending, and fighting. Small business-owners like Lila’s father, Fernando, live in constant fear of the gangsters’ financial domination and violence.
Camorra / Camorrist Quotes in My Brilliant Friend
The My Brilliant Friend quotes below are all either spoken by Camorra / Camorrist or refer to Camorra / Camorrist. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Adolescence: Chapter 62
Quotes
Marcello sat down, loosened his tie, crossed his legs.
The unpredictable revealed itself only at that point. I saw Lila lose her color, become as pale as when she was a child, whiter than her wedding dress, and her eyes had that sudden contraction that turned them into cracks. […] She was looking at the shoes of Marcello Solara.
[…] Marcello had on his feet the shoes bought earlier by Stefano, her husband. It was the pair she had made with Rino, making and unmaking them for months, ruining her hands.
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Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire My Brilliant Friend LitChart as a printable PDF.
Camorra / Camorrist Term Timeline in My Brilliant Friend
The timeline below shows where the term Camorra / Camorrist appears in My Brilliant Friend. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Childhood: The Story of Don Achille, Chapter 18
...as the temperatures rise. At the Bar Solara, a popular gambling location run by the Camorrist Silvio Solara, many fights break out each week. Silvio takes it upon himself to beat...
(full context)
Adolescence: The Story of the Shoes, Chapter 16
...He rails against the Solaras and their establishment, a place for “loan sharks from the Camorra.” He accuses Don Achille of being a “Nazi Fascist” and claims Stefano runs the grocery...
(full context)
Adolescence: The Story of the Shoes, Chapter 17
...and homes have been purchased with dirty money, and with the shadowy presence of the Camorra.
(full context)
...She tries to figure out who in the neighborhood is a Communist, who is a Camorrist, and who is a fascist. Lenù feels that this newfound knowledge “enclose[s]” her in the...
(full context)
