Those already familiar with the biblical basis will recognize the allusions to familiar narratives, names, and events, but Sveen never lapses into Bible Bingo, instead ensuring that each drop is deliberate and useful but never entirely essential. Anyone who lacks biblical specifics can still find this an engaging read, although they might walk away with a less traditional, albeit still interesting , view of Jesus and his disciples. Children of God is Sveen’s first book translated into English, and it marks a stellar debut. The prose in translation reads without issue. It is precise and visual, easy to get lost in and discover dozens of pages have flown by. Unnerving at times and comforting at others, the writing never loses its emotional core. For those interested in novels touching on religious themes with respect but not chained down by reverence, Children of God is the place to look. James Farner University of Oklahoma Roberto Saviano The Piranhas:The Boy Bosses of Naples Trans. Antony Shugaar. New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2018. 345 pages. Heroism in journalism seems to be one of the major themes of our time, and by almost any standard, Roberto Saviano is one of the most heroic. His book Gomorrah (2006) exposed the corruption from the bottom to the top of Neapolitan society , resulting in a worldwide best-seller, an internationally acclaimed motion picture , a television series, and numerous arrests. It was so accurate and insightful that for more than a decade, Saviano has been under the round-the-clock protection of the Italian government to prevent his being murdered. Accompanied by armed guards wherever he goes, he must change residence on an unpredictable basis, often sleeping in police stations. All this is certainly a hindrance to his carrying out his profession as a journalist. The Piranhas: The Boy Bosses of Naples, his latest book, is a novel based on his thorough knowledge of organized crime in Naples and may well have as much fact in it as fiction. This kind of hybrid has the appeal of what is sometimes called “faction,” but it usually results in something not as emotionally insightful as the best novels and not as reliable as the best nonfiction. The main character in The Piranhas is a boy of fifteen, Nicolas Fiorillo, who is involved in several petty crimes—thievery, vandalism, drug dealing, and other general nastiness that takes a strong stomach to read about. Nicolas is also an avid reader of Machiavelli, no less. A power vacuum develops when the senior Camorra leaders in his community are “ratted out” and jailed. Nicolas sees no reason a fifteen-year-old like himself can’t run the local rackets, so he schemes to take over, opposing his elders, ultimately graduating to murder. The story of Nicolas is planned to continue in another novel to be published in the US in 2019. The Piranhas’ best strength is in its characterization . The members of Nicolas’s gang are, after all, teenage boys, and convincingly portraying that mind-set is a challenge for any novelist. But except that the gangsters are boys, the story itself is much akin to traditional gangster sagas, like Little Caesar, and events unfold as might be expected. The translation, unfortunately, is one of those that reminds you on almost every page that you are reading a translation, as it struggles to convert Neapolitan street slang to a not-quite-believable English equivalent. Frequently, phrases and words are given in the original, followed by a translation. A bit of that goes a long way, contributing to the overall feeling of emotional detachment. J. Madison Davis Palmyra, Virginia Yannis Tsirbas Vic City Express Trans. Fred A. Reed. Montreal. Baraka Books. 2018. 96 pages. Yannis Tsirbas’s Vic City Express, which was previously shortlisted for the Greek National Literature Award in 2013, is a small book that throws a very large shadow. The novella begins with a simple enough premise: one passenger on a train begins an interaction with another, a nationalist, who then proceeds to outline a reactionary Books in Review 94 WLT WINTER 2019 history of his neighborhood. From there we’re led through a series of interrelated stories that together...