The Skin

"It is a shameful thing to win a war." The reliably unorthodox Curzio Malaparte's own service as an Italian liaison officer with the Allies during the invasion of Italy was the basis for this searing and surreal novel, in which the contradictions inherent in any attempt to simultaneously conquer and liberate a people beset the triumphant but ingenuous American forces as they make their way up the peninsula. Malaparte's account begins in occupied Naples, where veterans of the disbanded and humiliated Italian army beg for work, and ceremonial dinners for high Allied officers or important politicians feature the last remaining sea creatures in the city's famous aquarium. He leads the American Fifth Army along the Via Appia Antica into Rome, where the celebrations of a vast, joy-maddened crowd are only temporarily interrupted when one well-wisher slips beneath the tread of a Sherman tank. As the Allied advance continues north to Florence and Milan, the civil war intensifies, provoking in the author equal abhorrence for killing fellow Italians and for the "heroes of tomorrow," those who will come out of hiding to shout "Long live liberty" as soon as the Germans are chased away.Like Celine, another anarchic satirist and disillusioned veteran of two world wars, Malaparte paints his compatriots as in a fun-house mirror that yet speaks the truth, creating terrifying, grotesque, and often darkly comic scenes that will not soon be forgotten. Unlike the French writer however, he does so in the characteristically sophisticated, lush, yet unsentimental prose that was as responsible for his fame as was his surprising political trajectory. The Skin was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church, and placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

“"Surreal, disenchanted, on the edge of amoral, Malaparte broke literary ground for writers from Ryszard Kapuscinski to Joseph Heller." -Frederika Randall, Wall Street Journal ”

The sordid underclass of the town possess a lust for life and a will to live, and the unbearable becomes bearable - even magnified - for the reader in this beautiful homage to his hometown which Malaparte tinges with the absurd and black humor. Vogue Paris In The Skin the war is not yet over, but its conclusion is already decided. The bombs are still falling, but falling now on a different Europe. Yesterday no one had to ask who was the executioner and who the victim. Now, suddenly, good and evil have veiled their faces; the new world is still barely known ... the person telling the tale is sure of only one thing: he is certain he can be certain of nothing. His ignorance becomes wisdom. Milan Kundera Malaparte enlarged the art of fiction in more perverse, inventive and darkly liberating ways than one would imagine possible, long before novelists like Philip Roth, Robert Coover, and E. L. Doctorow began using their own and other people's histories as Play-Doh. Gary Indiana Surreal, disenchanted, on the edge of amoral, Malaparte broke literary ground for writers from Ryszard Kapuscinski to Joseph Heller. Frederika Randall, Wall Street Journal A skilled guide to the lowest depths of Europe's inferno. Adrian Lyttelton, The Times Literary Supplement A scrupulous reporter? Probably not. One of the most remarkable writers of the 20th century? Certainly. Ian Buruma "this sulphurous classic of a non-fiction novel ... his glittering, swaggering nihilism still has the power to shock as he flays both Allied Naivety and Italian corruption." -- Boyd Tonkin The Independent 'Now the indispensable New York Review Books has given us the first complete translation into English of The Skin. An embodiment of Europe's bad conscience, Malaparte's voice was one that right-thinking people of every denomination preferred not to hear. That is why this difficult book was so hated and condemned when it first appeared, and remains so well worth reading.' New Statesman

CURZIO MALAPARTE, the pseudonym of Kurt Erich Suckert (1898-1957), was born in Prato and served in World War I. An early supporter of the Italian Fascist movement and a prolific journalist, he soon established himself as an outspoken public figure. In 1931 he incurred Mussolini's displeasure by publishing a how-to manual entitled Technique of the Coup-d'Etat, which led to his arrest and a brief term in prison. During World War II Malaparte worked as a correspondent, for much of the time on the eastern front, and this experience provided the basis for his two most famous books, Kaputt (1944) and The Skin (1949), both available from NYRB Classics. Malaparte's political sympathies veered to the left after the war. He continued to write, while also involving himself in the theater and the cinema. The Skin was adapted for the cinema in 1981.

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