John Follain

Rita Cristofari

Kabul was always more beautiful in the snow. Even the piles of rotting rubbish in my street, the only source of food for the scrawny chickens and goats that our neighbors kept outside their mud houses, looked beautiful to me after the snow had covered them in white during the long night. Though she is only twenty-three, Zoya has witnessed and endured more tragedy and terror than most people experience in a lifetime. Born in a land ravaged by war, she was robbed of her parents when they were murdered by Muslim fundamentalists. Devastated, she fled Kabul with her grandmother and started a new life in exile in Pakistan. She joined the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), an organization that challenged the crushing edicts of the Taliban government, and she took destiny into her own hands, joining a dangerous, clandestine war to save her nation. Direct and unsentimental, Zoya vividly brings to life the realities of growing up in a Muslim culture, the terror of living in a perpetual war zone, the pain of losing those she has loved, the horrors of a woman’s life under the Taliban, and the discovered healing and transformation that lead her on a path of resistance.

An Afghan Woman's Struggle for Freedom

Zoya's Story

Traces the rise and fall of the Sicilian Mafia's Corleone organization, from its humble origins to Cosa Nostra dominance, focusing on the lives of Luciano "The Professor" Leggio, Salvator "The Beast" Riina, and Bernardo "The Tractor" Provenzano.

Inside the Mafia's Most Infamous Family

The Last Godfathers

This is a recounting of the Meredith Kercher case, from her murder to the acquittal of Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox.  Shortly after 12:30 p.m. on November 2, 2007, Italian police were called to the Perugia home of twenty-one-year-old British student Meredith Kercher. They found her body on the floor under a beige quilt. Her throat had been cut.  Based on four years of reporting and access to the complete case files, and hundreds of first hand interviews, this book takes readers on a journey behind the scenes of the investigation, as the author the drama of the trials and appeal hearings he lived through.  Four days later, the prosecutor jailed Meredith's roommate, American student Amanda Knox, and Raffaele Sollecito, her Italian boyfriend. He also jailed Rudy Guede, an Ivory Coast drifter. Four years later Knox and Sollecito were acquitted amid chaotic scenes in front of the world's media.  Including exclusive interviews with Meredith's friends and other key sources, this book reveals how the Italian dream turned into a nightmare.

the definitive account of the Amanda Knox case

Death in Italy

Finally, The Complete Story of the Legendary Terrorist, Carlos The Jackal

Jackal

John Follain, who covers Italy for the Sunday Times, tells the definitive inside story of this extraordinary case. Shortly after 12.30pm on 2 November 2007, Italian police were called to the Perugia home of 21-year-old British student Meredith Kercher. They found her body on the floor under a beige quilt. Her throat had been cut. Four days later, the prosecutor jailed Meredith's flatmate American student Amanda Knox, and Raffaele Sollecito, her Italian boyfriend. He also jailed Rudy Guede, an Ivory Coast drifter. Four years later Knox and Sollecito were acquitted amid chaotic scenes in front of the world's media. Uniquely based on four years of reporting and access to the complete case files, Death In Perugia takes readers on a riveting journey behind the scenes of the investigation, as John Follain shares the drama of the trials and appeal hearings he lived through. Including exclusive interviews with Meredith's friends and other key sources, Death in Perugia reveals how the Italian dream turned into a nightmare.

The Definitive Account of the Meredith Kercher case from her murder to the acquittal of Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox

Death in Perugia

Negli ultimi quarant'anni, i volti della mafia siciliana sono stati per tutti quelli di Salvatore Riina e di Bernardo Provenzano. Ma come sono arrivati questi due uomini privi di cultura a presiedere un'organizzazione criminale di dimensioni mondiali partendo da Corleone?

Gli ultimi boss

Perché Falcone e Borsellino dovevano morire?La storia vera23 maggio 1992: il giudice Falcone muore nella strage di Capaci, il più cruento attentato dinamitardo organizzato dalla mafia negli ultimi anni, in cui persero la vita anche la moglie Francesca e tre uomini della scorta.Cinquantasette giorni dopo, il 19 luglio, la mafia uccide di nuovo: l’amico e collega di Falcone, il giudice Paolo Borsellino, salta in aria insieme ai cinque uomini della scorta in via d’Amelio, a Palermo.John Follain – giornalista inglese inviato in Italia proprio in quegli anni – ricostruisce attentamente la dinamica degli attentati e l’inchiesta che ne seguì: dalla disperata corsa contro il tempo di Borsellino per scoprire chi avesse ucciso Falcone, nella tragica consapevolezza di essere il prossimo della lista, fino alla straordinaria parabola investigativa che portò all’arresto dei padrini Riina e Provenzano. Ma il libro fornisce anche una visione d’insieme senza precedenti sul modo in cui opera la mafia siciliana, descrivendo nel dettaglio la progettazione e la realizzazione degli omicidi dei due eroici magistrati.Sulla base di nuove ed esclusive interviste e delle testimonianze di investigatori, pentiti, sopravvissuti, parenti e amici, questo saggio racconta minuto per minuto gli eventi che hanno segnato – in maniera irreversibile – il nostro Paese e la lotta dello Stato contro la mafia.John Follainnato nel 1966, laureato ad Oxford, scrive per il "Sunday Times" sull'Italia e altri paesi europei. Ex corrispondente da Roma per lo stesso giornale e prima per l'agenzia Reuters, attualmente vive e lavora a Parigi. Ha pubblicato diversi libri dedicati a vicende italiane, tra cui ricordiamo Gli ultimi boss e L'isola di Mussolini. Vincitore del Premio Viareggio 2002 con Zoya la mia storia.

I 57 giorni che hanno sconvolto l'Italia

Recounts the highly publicized trial of Amanda Knox, drawing on interviews and complete case files to assess the true story and media sensation surrounding the 2007 murder of her roommate and the arrests of Knox and Raffaele Sollecito.

The Definitive Account of the Amanda Knox Case

A Death in Italy

On an August night in 1994 French counterespionage officers seized the world's most wanted terrorist from a villa in the Sudan. After more than two decades on the run, Carlos "the Jackal" had finally been caged. For years he had murdered and bombed his way to notoriety, evading capture thanks to powerful backers and the blunders of Western secret services. Jackal is the definitive biography of this self-proclaimed "professional revolutionary," ladies man, and cold-blooded killer. Setting his story against the larger political picture of the time, it exposes how the Soviet bloc and certain Arab regimes sponsored terrorist actions for their own ends during the cold war. A cautionary tale of governments that fostered the image of an invincible criminal mastermind - who was in reality a pawn in the chilling cold war chess game between East and West - Jackal also provides fascinating insight into the making and mind of the world's most wanted terrorist.

The Complete Story of the Legendary Terrorist, Carlos the Jackal

THE LAST GODFATHERS charts the spectacular rise and fall of the richest and most powerful crime family in history: the Sicilian mafia’s Corleonese clan. From humble post-war origins in the dismal town of Corleone, the clan manipulated Cosa Nostra’s code of honour to deceive and bludgeon its way to the summit of the secret brotherhood, launching an unprecedented purge of its rivals and a terrorist campaign which decimated anti-mafia judges, police and politicians. Investigative journalist John Follain focuses on the three godfathers who headed the clan from the 1950s onwards – their lives and crimes, their loves and hates, and the state’s sporadic efforts to hunt them. Luciano ‘The Professor’ Leggio, Salvatore ‘The Beast’ Riina and Bernardo ‘The Tractor’ Provenzano, who was on the run for a record 43 years, forged a vicious clan bent on the subversion of democracy. Cutting through the romantic aura of Hollywood films, THE LAST GODFATHERS portrays the true face of the crime family which inspired Mario Puzo to write The Godfather. Based on thousands of pages of judicial documents, wiretap transcripts, the testimony of mafiosi defectors and interviews with investigators, this is the definitive word on the world’s most notorious criminal organisation.

The mafia murders that stunned Italy, and the thriling story of how the killers were brought to justice—based on new exclusive material, including previously unexplored testimonies of 269 witnessess May 23, 2012, marks 20 years since the mafia blew apart its "Number One Enemy," the legendary prosecutor Judge Falcone, with a motorway bomb that also killed his wife Francesca and three bodyguards. Fifty-seven days later, the mafia killed Falcone's friend and colleague, Judge Paolo Borsellino, with a car bomb outside his mother's home that also killed five bodyguards. The first book about these murders, Vendetta will tell the inside story of the assassination plot and the investigation that followed. It reveals Borsellino's desperate race against time to find out who killed his friend while knowing he was next on the list, and reveals the daring undercover police mission which unmasked the killers. Based on new and exclusive interviews and the testimony of investigators, mafia supergrasses, survivors, relatives, and friends, this book recounts the events hour-by-hour and minute-by-minute as the Mafiosi plan and carry out the murders, and as the police hunt them down.

The Mafia, Judge Falcone, and the Quest for Justice

Vendetta

On the night of Monday, May 4, 1998, in Vatican territory, the bodies of the commander of the Swiss Guard, his wife, and a young lance corporal were found in the barracks of the picturesque force entrusted with protecting the pope. It was the worst bloodbath to take place in more than a century in the heart of the supreme authority of the world's one billion Catholics. Four hours later, the Vatican announced that the lance corporal, twenty-three-year-old Cédric Tornay, had shot the couple, then committed suicide in "a fit of madness" brought on by frustration with the unit's discipline -- a conclusion it reaffirmed after a nine-month internal inquiry. But as John Follain's hard-hitting exposé shows, the official report was a travesty, a tissue of suppositions, contradictions, and omissions. Based on an exhaustive three-year investigation, City of Secrets reveals how the Vatican, the oldest and most secretive autocracy in the world, staged an elaborate plot to obstruct justice -- and hide the scandals it dared not confess.

The Startling Truth Behind the Vatican Murders

City of Secrets

I 57 giorni che hanno sconvolto l'Italia. Perché Falcone e Borsellino dovevano morire?

On 23 May 1992 the Mafia assassinated its 'Number One Enemy', the legendary prosecutor Judge Falcone, with a motorway bomb that also killed his wife Francesca and three bodyguards. Fifty-seven days later, the Mafia killed Falcone's friend and colleague, Judge Paolo Borsellino, with a car bomb outside his mother's home that also killed five bodyguards. These two murders changed forever how Italy viewed the Mafia. VENDETTA tells the inside story of the assassination plots and the investigation that followed. Follain reveals Borsellino's desperate race against time to find out who killed his friend while knowing he was next on the list and reveals the daring undercover police mission which unmasked the killers. Based on new and exclusive interviews and the testimony of investigators, Mafia supergrasses, survivors, relatives and friends, VENDETTA recounts the events hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute as the Mafiosi plan and carry out the murders, and as the police hunt them down.

John Follain

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