A BESTSELLING author forced to live under police protection after publishing an exposé of the Naples mafia is expected to run for parliament in a challenge to Silvio Berlusconi, the billionaire tycoon and former prime minister.

Roberto Saviano, 28, whose book Gomorrah: Italy’s Other Mafia sold 1m copies in Italy and prompted several death threats, has been asked to join the slate led by Walter Veltroni, leader of the centre-left Democratic party and Berlusconi’s main rival in the general election on April 13-14.

Saviano, a journalist who was born in Naples, witnessed his first murder at the age of 14 and saw his father, a doctor, beaten for trying to help a teenage victim left for dead in the street. For his study of the Camorra crime network, which is based around the Naples region, he worked as a waiter at a gangland wedding and in textile and construction firms controlled by the mob.

At a meeting in the town of Casal di Principe, near Naples, Saviano named three local bosses, saying: “[They] are worthless. Their power is founded on your fear. They must clear out of this land.”

Umberto Eco, author of The Name of the Rose, appealed on television for the state to protect Saviano. For more than a year he has lived in hiding, escorted by three police bodyguards. He visits schools to talk to pupils about organised crime. The question he is most often asked is: “Is there any hope?”

The Camorra’s stranglehold was underscored last month when tons of household rubbish piled up uncollected in towns throughout the Bay of Naples; the secret society has long controlled the lucrative collection and treatment of such waste.

Luigi Coldagelli, Veltroni’s spokesman, said: “The two have met and appreciate each other. It’s likely that Saviano will accept the invitation to stand. It would be highly symbolic because the fight against the mafia is in the Democratic party’s DNA.”

In his book, Saviano pointed out that the Camorra has powerful friends in politics, makes almost all businesses pay protection money and has spread to areas of central and northern Italy, including Tuscany.

Veltroni, 52, mayor of Rome and a former newspaper editor, will kick off his election campaign on Saturday with a tour of Italian cities. Opinion polls show him lagging behind Berlusconi, but he is almost two decades younger and could prove a strong campaigner.

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