News

A new tourist guide providing visitors to Italy with all they need to know about the mafia is proving a big success.

The 55-page guide, written by Augusto Cavadi, a philosophy professor who gives lectures on organised crime at Palermo University, was published this week and has been flying off the shelves, reports the Daily Mail.

Mr Cavadi said the book covers the questions that he is asked most regularly, including what a mafioso looks like, whether the mob will last forever and how criminals first rose to power in the mafia's homeland of Sicily.

'For years I've been accompanying groups of tourists who choose to come here with the aim of understanding our land and our problems,' Mr Cavadi said.

'They always ask me the same questions: the relationship between politics and the mafia, and how it's possible that we can't get rid of the mob when there are 5,000 of them and 5m Sicilians.'

While it may seem like a phenomenon rooted in the past, the mafia is still a problem in Italy and the government has launched a concentrated effort to fight organised crime in recent years.

Two years ago, Bernardo Provenzano, the country's most wanted crime boss, was captured after more than 40 years on the run.

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