“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 Céline,
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.
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