Sometimes, solitude simply looks like an empty restaurant room. Roberto Saviano was sitting in a corner, invisible from the outside. This is where he usually goes, where he is least likely to be shot. The police protecting him waited outside. The waiter who had come to take his order gave him a sympathetic look; the other customers of the establishment were having lunch in an adjacent area.

Beneath his black beanie, the 45-year-old was barely recognizable from his many appearances on television, on his YouTube channel (where he has 329,00 subscribers), in the pages of newspapers and in court. That was the intention. But soon, his face lit up with a sincere smile and the Neapolitan writer dropped his mask. Then the hat.

Saviano is one of some 600 Italians living under protection, whether threatened by the mafia or neo-fascists of various stripes. Since the publication of Gomorrah in 2006, about the criminal clutches of the powerful Camorra, the mafia of Naples and the surrounding region, the organization has sworn to eliminate its author. For 19 years, Saviano has endured an "armored life," as he calls it. But he is convinced that one day, all this will come to an end: "I lost my 20s, then my 30s. At some point, something is bound to change. I'll live my 50^th birthday to the full."

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The Roman neighborhood where we met him, once home to slaughterhouses, their employees and countless butchers, has become gentrified. A few typical meat dishes remain from this vanished past, served in old restaurants, like the tripe in tomato sauce that Saviano ordered. But he blamed himself for eating too much bread. He must be careful. He doesn't get to stretch his legs that often.

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