CURZIO MALAPARTE (1947)

Journalist, dramatist, short-story writer and novelist, one of the most powerful, brilliant and controversial of the Italian writers of the Fascist and postWorld War II periods.

An influential political journalist and novelist during the 1920s and 1930s regarded as the Fascist Party´s strongest pen, he later became disillusioned with Fascism.

Malaparte was a volunteer in World War I then became active in journalism.

In 1924 he founded the Roman periodical La Conquista dello stato; in 1926 he joined Massimo Bontempelli in founding 900, an influential, cosmopolitan literary quarterly whose foreign editorial board included James Joyce and Ilya Ehrenburg; he later became co-editor of Fiera Letteraria, then editor of La Stampa in Turin.

An early convert to Fascism he became next to Gabriele d´Annunzio the most powerful writer associated with the party. His political views were voiced in his own literary magazine Prospettive (1937) and in many articles written for Fascist periodicals as well as a particularly controversial and influential discussion of violence and means of revolution published in French as Technique du coup d´etat (1931). His early fiction -Avventure di un capitano di Sventura (1927); Sodoma e Gomorra (1931); and Sangue (1937)- also showed a Fascist slant.

During the 1940s Malaparte repudiated Fascism and was expelled from the party.

During World War II he was involved with the Allied Army, both as a correspondent and later as a liaison officer during the occupation of Naples.
His reports from the Russian front were published as Il Volga nasce in Europa (1943, The Volga Rises in Europe). He then acquired an international reputation with two passionately written, brilliantly realistic war novels: Kaputt (1944), a story of the horrors of war and the ruin of Europe drawn from his experience as correspondent on the Russian front, and La pelle (1949, The Skin), a terrifying, surrealistically presented series of episodes showing the suffering and degradation that the war had brought to the people of Naples who after the war as the title implies had little left but their skins. These two works were acclaimed internationally for their bold style and emotional impact.

While continuing to write articles and fiction Malaparte wrote three realistic dramas based in nthe lives of Marcel Proust (Du côté de chez Proust, performed 1948) and Karl Marx (Das Kapital, performed 1949) and on life in Vienna during the Russian occupation (Anche le donne hanno perso la guerra, performed 1954, The Women Lost the War Too). He also wrote a film Il Cristo proibito (1951) and in addition to other works published a volume of Racconti italiani (1957, Italian Tales).
Publication of his complete works began after his death.