Italy's Salman Rushdie: The renarration of “Roberto Saviano” in English for the post-9/11 cultural market

This article considers the construction of the literary fame of Roberto Saviano, author of the 2006 Italian bestseller Gomorra, in the British book marketplace. In order to understand the political import of Saviano's translated author-brand, this analysis utilizes the tools of narrative theory to look at what narratives were created around the authorial personality and what other public narratives and meta-narratives are mobilized to introduce the author to his new reading public. The analysis centres on Saviano's reputation as “Italy's Salman Rushdie” and it demonstrates that the political import of the narratives that underpin the author-brand in translation is linked with a set of post-9/11 public narratives