The success of the Five Star Movement in last week’s national elections has its roots in this impoverished city

Few people in Rione Luzzatti are aware of how intriguing they and their rundown neighbourhood have become thanks to the phenomenal success of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels. Located to the east of the Naples train station, the district is believed to have been the setting for the childhood home of the two protagonists, Elena and Lina. “People around here don’t really read books,” says Pascale Edoardo.

Plagued by crime and high unemployment, his fellow Neapolitans dismiss Rione Luzzati as a hostile no-go zone. Ferrante fans are more likely to flock to the more salubrious areas of this complex yet fascinating southern Italian city that feature in the novels.

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“We’re a dormitory of Naples. Nobody comes here, there is nothing,” Edoardo adds. “Only the centre has been made attractive for tourists.”

Book culture may have passed them by, but Edoardo and his friend Sergio Amato are tuned in politically. Sitting outside a shop selling pet food, a rottweiler lounging on a cushion beside them, they explain why they voted for the insurgent Five Star Movement (M5S) in last Sunday’s national election.

They were far from alone. In what has been depicted as one of the most striking political shifts in the history of the Italian republic, M5S became the biggest single party after taking 32% of the vote. Led by 31-year-old Luigi Di Maio, the party was founded less than a decade ago, but its strong performance was not unexpected.

What did surprise was the far-right League’s victory within a coalition that included Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right Forza Italia and the smaller far-right Brothers of Italy. The group won the largest share of the vote – 37% – although on a personal level it was a dismal result for Berlusconi, who at 81 is desperate to stay in the game. Still, it was even more destructive for the centre-left Democratic party, which had its worst ever performance.

The election, which produced a hung parliament, exposed the country’s cavernous economic divisions as much as its political ones: M5S triumphed in the impoverished south, while the rightwing coalition dominated in the wealthier north. But in Naples, considered the heart of southern protest movements, the anti-establishment shift began much earlier. Naples was among the first cities to embrace M5S when it was founded in 2009. That was partly because two of its young activists were local: Di Maio was born in Avellino but grew up in nearby Pomigliano d’Arco, while parliamentarian Roberto Fico is a Neapolitan. However, the first major rejection of traditional parties came in 2011, when Luigi de Magistris, a former prosecutor from populist group Italy of Values, became mayor after more than a decade of centre-left administrations. “In a way, de Magistris pre-empted this protest vote,” said Mauro Calise, a politics professor at the University of Naples Federico II.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Forza Italia, led by Silvio Berlusconi, left, was overtaken by League, led by Matteo Salvini, in the 5 March election. Photograph: Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters

Di Maio’s meteoric rise to leader undoubtedly enhanced M5S’s popularity in the city, where it scooped more than 50% of last week’s vote. In second place, with around 23%, was the centre-right alliance, with the Democratic party, led by former prime minister Matteo Renzi, in third. A message daubed on walls across the city laid bare the widespread sentiment: “No Renzi government”.

“Two years ago you could not write about Italian politics without mentioning Renzi’s absolute rule within the party and government,” added Calise. “Now it is all about his definite demise. Once the old party system collapses, and this has been the case all over Europe with the exception of Germany, everything is up for a big change.”

Naples’ residents are hoping they will be among the first to benefit from that sweeping change. “The Democratic party robbed us,” said Amato. “Berlusconi is a convicted criminal – how could we have voted for him? I support Di Maio because he seems honest. I’m not so sure he can change much, there are huge problems and he isn’t that well educated. We will have to wait and see.”

Horse-trading is now under way between parties to reach the requisite 40% required to form a government. But if Di Maio, a former waiter who did not complete university, becomes prime minister, he faces a mammoth task in tackling his home region’s deeply entrenched problems, including extreme poverty, organised crime and the mafia’s toxic waste dumps, which have been linked to the high cancer rate.

During one of his final rallies in the town of Caserta, he said the only way to confront the mafia was to send corrupt politicians home. Di Maio has been quick to deal with those he called “bad apples” in his own party, having expelled 10 parliamentarians who were exposed for defaulting on an obligation to put half of their wages into a fund for small businesses in the weeks before the vote. Amato said the move proves that M5S “kicks the crooks out”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Five Star Movement leader Luigi Di Maio celebrates on 6 March after taking 32% of the national vote and 50% of the vote in Naples. Photograph: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Images

Pasquale Giordano, who owns a butcher’s shop in Naples’ densely populated Spanish quarter, believes M5S and its fund will be the answer to his woes. “We small business owners keep Italy together; if it wasn’t for us the country would fall apart,” he says.

Young Neapolitans also have high expectations of Di Maio. “He is young and seems closer to the people than the others,” said Giovanni Portoghese, a 20-year-old art student who voted for the first time last week. “Renzi is young too but he had his chance and failed.”

Portoghese is one of a group of students who set up “Heart of Naples”, an initiative aimed partly at bringing the local community and the large foreign population closer together. In the election, the city defiantly snubbed the xenophobic League, whose leader, Matteo Salvini, has dismissed southern Italians as “parasites”. Along with its far-right ally, Brothers of Italy, it took less than 3% of the Naples vote.

Di Maio is celebrating what he called the beginning of Italy’s Third Republic, or a “republic for citizens”. He was referring to the dominant political orders since Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime was overthrown at the end of the second world war. The so-called First Republic, which was led by the Christian Democrats or Socialists, fell in the early 1990s amid a series of scandals that exposed widespread corruption and mafia influence. In 1994, Berlusconi seized power, thus ushering in the Second Republic.

Citizens are certainly taking Di Maio at his word, with supporters in Puglia already queuing up in job centres, earlier this week seeking the promised basic income. But pundits are starting to question whether he and his team will be capable of running such a hugely indebted and complicated country.

Calise pointed to the poor track record and dwindling support in administrations already managed by M5S. In the northern city of Turin, led by mayor Chiara Appendino since June 2016, the Democratic party came out on top. Support for M5S also fell in Rome and Livorno, a city in Tuscany.

“We’re talking about a protest vote, and one that came from a disadvantaged social structure,” said Calise. “It’s a way of saying ‘OK, let’s just get rid of this’. But it’s unstable. The big question now is, are they going to be able to respond to this protest? I suspect, once the euphoria dims, there will be volatility in both the party’s leadership and the electorate.”