Sanne de Boer (b. 1979) is an investigative journalist who has lived in Calabria since 2006. She is the first foreign journalist based there to write about the Ndrangheta, and regularly appears on Dutch TV and radio as a mafia expert. She writes for several newspapers and magazines, including De Correspondent and Oneworld. Mafiopoli is her first book.
(Nieuw Amsterdam, 2020, 304 pages)
Mafiopoli: a town or society run by the mafia (neologism from the Italian word ‘mafia’ and the Ancient Greek ‘polis’ for city or community).
In 2006, journalist Sanne de Boer moves from Amsterdam to a sleepy seaside village in the southern Italian province of Calabria. She relishes the slower pace of life, the overwhelming hospitality of her neighbours, the beautiful nature and wonderful food – until one night a car in her street is set alight. Its owner, a local government worker, refuses to call the police and quits her job. When a man is subsequently shot dead in the village, it turns out he was a member of the Ndrangheta. De Boer, full of questions but met with silence, goes…
