In recent years Naples has become, for better or worse, the newdestinationin Italy. While many of its more esoteric features are on display for all to see the stories behind them remain largely hidden. In Marius Kociejowskis portrait of this baffling city, the serpent can be many thingsVesuvius, 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. This book is a first edition and it is signed by the author. 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. Very Good con