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A review by quintusmarcus
Kaputt by Curzio Malaparte
4.0
Curzio Malaparte's Kaputt is genre-bending house of horrors. Derived from his WWII dispatches for Corriere della Sera, Malaparte provides not only sickening eyewitness accounts from the eastern front, but from the dinner tables of the Nazi governors. Originally a follower of Mussolini, Malaparte fell afoul of the dictator and ended up in prison. Weaseling his way out, Malaparte became friendly with Mussolini's son-in-law Galeazzo Ciano, who helped set him up as a war correspondent. Malaparte visited and reported from Yugoslavia, Romania, Poland, the Soviet Union, Finland, and Sweden.
Kaputt is strange hybrid: although based on his war reports for the paper, there is much imaginative writing, particularly in the various conversations. It's impossible to tell what is fact and what is fiction, although his descriptions of specific events (such as the massacre at Jassy/Iasi) are clearly factual. Malaparte's distant and disdainful observations are simultaneously hilarious and hair-raising: his report, for example, of a dinner with high officials of the German occupation of Poland is particularly remarkable. The Governor-General blandly describes the filthy conditions of the Warsaw ghetto, saying a German could never live under such conditions. Of course, Malaparte remarks: the Germans are a civilized people.
Malaparte moves from city to city, cataloguing the horrors and inhumanity with frequently ironic detachment. It's often hard to stomach, but Malaparte's observations are detailed, brilliant, and penetrating. Tough book to read, but much value for those that can take it.
Kaputt is strange hybrid: although based on his war reports for the paper, there is much imaginative writing, particularly in the various conversations. It's impossible to tell what is fact and what is fiction, although his descriptions of specific events (such as the massacre at Jassy/Iasi) are clearly factual. Malaparte's distant and disdainful observations are simultaneously hilarious and hair-raising: his report, for example, of a dinner with high officials of the German occupation of Poland is particularly remarkable. The Governor-General blandly describes the filthy conditions of the Warsaw ghetto, saying a German could never live under such conditions. Of course, Malaparte remarks: the Germans are a civilized people.
Malaparte moves from city to city, cataloguing the horrors and inhumanity with frequently ironic detachment. It's often hard to stomach, but Malaparte's observations are detailed, brilliant, and penetrating. Tough book to read, but much value for those that can take it.