Rome - Two years of living under a 24-hour police guard and Roberto Saviano, the Italian author of the international bestseller Gomorra, says he's had enough.

"I'm leaving Italy, at least for now. I don't see any reason to stubbornly continue living as a prisoner of myself, of my book and of my success," Saviano announced in emotional, and sometimes foul-mouthed terms to the La Repubblica newspaper published Wednesday.

"I'm only 28-years-old," he said, lamenting the loss of a time when he could go out for a beer with friends or browse idly in a bookshop.

Instead he has been confined to the barracks of the Carabinieri para-military police, who provide his security escort, or moved secretly by car, from one location to the next, Saviano said.

His remarks come in the wake of revelations earlier this week that the subject of his book, the Naples version of the mafia, the Camorra, is plotting to kill him "by Christmas."

According to Carmine Schiavone, a long-time Camorra turncoat, members of the notorious Casalesi clan are searching for explosives to use against Saviano and his police escort in a roadside bombing - a technique recalling the Sicilian Cosa Nostra's assassination of top anti-mafia prosecutors in the early 1990s.

Police officials have described Schiavone as "reliable," citing information which in the past has led to dozens of arrests, but insist the necessary measures to protect Saviano have been in place since 2006.

These were applied shortly after the first Camorra death threats against Saviano appeared following the success of Gomorra - a stark expose of the Camorra's control of the Naples hinterland through drug-trafficking, extortion, international smuggling and illegal toxic waste disposal.

Despite the latest assurances, including one made Tuesday by Italian President Giorgio Napolitano that the state "keep vigil" over his security, Saviano seems unswayed.

His decision to move abroad has been prompted by an exasperation with his current, constrained life-style - which he feels have made him an "ugly, diffident" person - as with a sense that many people in and around Naples "hate" him for his "success" in denouncing the Camorra through his book.

Gomorra - the title is the name of the city the Bible twins with Sodom as a centre of vice and a play on the name of the Neapolitan mob - has been translated into 43 languages. A film version is heading for the Oscars as Italy's official candidate.

But a recent documentary on Italian television suggested that in the mostly degraded Naples-area towns of Secondigliano and Casal di Principe - the Casalesi stronghold - Saviano is seen as a "furbo" (a sly one) who wrote the book for the sole purpose of making money.

Words like these hurt him, Saviano says. They indicate his denouncing of the Camorra, and the risks he and his Carabinieri escorts - who "protect me like a son" - face, are not appreciated.

Still, the author says his book has raised awareness of how organized crime continues to plague Italian society, and in particular the country's less developed South.

In what was seen as a major victory for the state, in cases where witnesses are often too afraid to speak, an appeals court in June upheld jail sentences for 16 Camorra bosses. Some of them were prominent Casalesi whose activities are described in Gomorra.

And last month the Italian government approved the deployment of 500 soldiers and 400 special anti-organized crime agents to assist local police in combating the Camorra, which according to Interior Minister Roberto Maroni is waging a "civil war" against the state.

The latest government action followed the alleged drug-turf war killing of six African immigrants, in an attack in Castel Volturno near Naples, by suspected Casalesi gunmen. Three men are in custody in connection with the killings.

Also in late September police arrested 20 suspected members of the Casalesi and seized over 100 million euros (136 million dollars).

Saviano hinted he may write about other topics during his self-imposed exile, but appealed to others to take up his work and continue exposing the mobsters who "fear words on a page."