The Skin

The Skin
Authors
Malaparte, Curzio
Publisher
NYRB Classics
Tags
war & military , war , political , literary , fiction , historical
ISBN
9781590176221
Date
1949-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Size
0.27 MB
Lang
en
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This is the first unexpurgated English edition of Curzio Malaparte’s legendary work *The Skin*. The book begins in 1943, with Allied forces cementing their grip on the devastated city of Naples. The sometime Fascist and ever-resourceful Curzio Malaparte is working with the Americans as a liaison officer. He looks after Colonel Jack Hamilton, “a Christian gentleman . . . an American in the noblest sense of the word,” who speaks French and cites the classics and holds his nose as the two men tour the squalid streets of a city in ruins where liberation is only another word for desperation. Veterans of the disbanded Italian army beg for work. A rare specimen from the city’s famous aquarium is served up at a ceremonial dinner for high Allied officers. Prostitution is rampant. The smell of death is everywhere.

Subtle, cynical, evasive, manipulative, unnerving, always astonishing, Malaparte is a supreme artist of the unreliable, both the product and the prophet of a world gone rotten to the core.