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Curzio Malaparte

Kaputt (New York Review Books Classics) Paperback – April 10, 2005

by Curzio Malaparte (Author), Cesare Foligno (Translator), Dan Hofstadter (Afterword)

4.4 185 ratings

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Curzio Malaparte was a disaffected supporter of Mussolini with a taste for danger and high living. Sent by an Italian paper during World War II to cover the fighting on the Eastern Front, Malaparte secretly wrote this terrifying report from the abyss, which became an international bestseller when it was published after the war. Telling of the siege of Leningrad, of glittering dinner parties with Nazi leaders, and of trains disgorging bodies in war-devastated Romania, Malaparte paints a picture of humanity at its most depraved.

Kaputt is an insider's dispatch from the world of the enemy that is as hypnotically fascinating as it is disturbing.

Print length

448 pages
Language

English
Publisher

New York Review Books
Publication date

April 10, 2005
Dimensions

5 x 0.93 x 7.97 inches
ISBN-10

9781590171479
ISBN-13

978-1590171479
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From the Publisher


	Kaputt	The Kremlin Ball	The Skin
About this book	Sent by an Italian paper during World War II to cover the fighting on the Eastern Front, Malaparte secretly wrote this terrifying report from the abyss.	This Proustian court chronicle of the excesses of Communist life could only have come from the impeccably perverse imagination of Curzio Malaparte.	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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The great paradox of Kaputt is that it is a stunning indictment of fascism written by an unrepentant fascist. . . . Malaparte’s descriptions of modern war have not aged an iota and might well have been written for today’s conflagration in Ukraine." —Tobias Grey, The Wall Street Journal

"Partly true and partly fiction, Kaputt is based on Malparte's experiences as a journalist following the Fascist armies invading the Soviet Union...Malaparte’s grotesquely baroque stories do not need to be true. They speak honestly about the absurd horrors of war." —The Times [UK]
"Frank, glamorous and gruesome, Kaputt delivers a unique insider’s verdict on the damned elite of a damnable system." —The Independent [UK]
"…a transcendent work about the admixture of high culture, bestial depravity and human sadism. Part autobiography and part fiction, it captures seemingly unfathomable history. No work has ever revealed more about the murderous blend of zeal and indifference that is fanaticism. Simultaneously mythic and wholly human, Kaputt haunts the reader forever." —Wall Street Journal

"A scrupulous reporter? Probably not. One of the most remarkable writers of the 20th century? Certainly." — Ian Buruma

"Kaputt is a sad, astonishing, horrifying and lyrical book. It shows us the results of ideological fanaticism, racism, twisted values masquerading as spiritual purity, and the hatred of life, in their most personal and shameful aspects. It is essential for any human understanding of World War II." — Margaret Atwood

"An amazing and engrossing book…quite brilliantly done, crammed with incredible and terrifying stories." —Orville Prescott, The New York Times

"[Kaputt] is like a report from the interior of Chernobyl. Malaparte had gotten very close to the radioactive core of the Axis Powers and somehow emerged to tell the tale, simultaneously humanizing things and rendering them even more chilling as a result…. Required reading for every citizen of the Twentieth Century." —Walter Murch

From the Back Cover

"Kaputt is a sad, astonishing, horrifying and lyrical book. It shows us the results of ideological fanaticism, racism, twisted values masquerading as spiritual purity, and the hatred of life, in their most personal and shameful aspects. It is essential for any human understanding of World War II." Margaret Atwood

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1590171470
Publisher ‏ : ‎ New York Review Books; Main edition (April 10, 2005)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 448 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781590171479
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1590171479
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 0.93 x 7.97 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #242,131 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3,034 in War Fiction (Books)
- #6,721 in Classic Literature & Fiction
- #14,041 in Literary Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.4 185 ratings

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Joanna King Vallancebooks

Ghastly and compelling: a personal vision of the Nazi era

Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2012

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I have read various histories of the Third Reich.(Outstanding books are Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume 1: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939 and The Third Reich: A New History .) Malaparte's book is something quite different. It is in no sense objective reporting, although he worked as a journalist on the Eastern Front. But it is an extraordinary work in giving a sense of the atmosphere among people carrying out the worst crimes ever committed. He recounts dinner parties with the Nazi leadership in occupied Poland that are an unforgettable glimpse of the self-indulgence and arrogance of individuals capable of carrying out sustained mass murder and genocide. There is irony at its most bitter in hearing the self-praise of these people, and their admiring awful wives. He shows how great cruelty may involve directing all one's emotions toward oneself. An excellent essay by Dan Hofstadter at the end of the book, that it might pay to read first if one hasn't read much before about the Nazi era, makes it clear that Malaparte thought for quite awhile that the Nazis would win. It quotes a friend of Malaparte's saying he originally praised the Nazi governor Frank, and in the published version there is an uneasy undertone in the recounting of conversations, as though Malaparte was queasy about his previous stance. Malaparte can't be ignored as a stylist, although that may seem a superficial consideration in a book with this subject matter. In fact it is the heart of the matter with this writer - he is fascinated by the style of horror, the style of murderers. And he delivers extraordinary imagery as he tries to capture that. He is writing from within that time, not from a considered, carefully analysed distance. This is also a book that touches on the question of whether people have an inner sense of justice. For many of the people Malaparte recounts, clearly not.

5 people found this helpful

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Daniel Myers

Proust at War?

Reviewed in the United States on December 14, 2005

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As is stated in the Hofstadter's Afterword, in my edition, Malaparte's writing is "....haunted by the desire to have been Proust." For anyone who has read Proust, this is clear from the title of the first chapter of the work, "Du Cote de Guuermantes". But of course, Malaparte is no Proust. No writer in all of literature is. Further, the setting of the opus is not the dinner tables of the aristocracy or of the haute bourgeoisie, but battlefronts in Eastern Europe and the dinner tables of ruthless men at war-Nevertheless, Malaparte does manage to capture some of the Proustian effect in his camera-eye, vivid, detailed snapshots of this environment.

But-caveat lector-this environment is so loathsome, bestial and vile-as wars tend to be-that one is in danger in becoming, by absorbing one's self in this book, in losing any hope in or affection for humanity. From horseheads rising from the surface from the frozen over Lake Laguda (perhaps the most lasting image, because so beautiful and horrific at once), to the officer who keeps a jar of human eyeballs of the partisans he is fighting on his desk to, well, any number of ghastly scenes, it is impossible for the reader to come away from Malaparte's take on the war, unaffected (excepting, of course, "readers" who dismiss the book out of hand and leave it deliberately on the airplane as one reviewer admits to doing).-But, perhaps, this reviewer's reaction is understandable. None of us relish looking on the dark, bestial side of men and women who might well be ourselves, given different circumstances of time and place.

But what significantly marks this book apart from all other war writings is the unwillingness to overtly take sides. It sometimes seems that one is reading an account of an extraterrestrial who has visited Europe to give an account of human behaviour. You won't find any Neo-Nazi glorification here, but neither will you find any of the late Stephen Ambrose's "Greatest Generation" American triumphalism. This is what truly makes the work great and a must have for every literate human unafraid of the tableaux that war presents: This, seemingly at least, disinterested depiction of the behaviour of men at their worst-The only writer Malaparte resembles, really, is not Proust, but the German writer Ernst Junger, whose journals, alas, have not yet been translated into English.

Well, prospective reader, there's the gauntlet-pick it up, if you dare.

25 people found this helpful

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Goral

The small-people viewpoint on WW2, related by the sole Western correspondent from the South-Eastern front. Pogrom of Jews.

Reviewed in the United States on November 21, 2013

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"Kaputt" (accent on the last syllable) is a German word for a miserable, disastrous failure. Curzio Malaparte was the only Western correspondent in the entire Russian front of WW2; all the others were confined to Moscow, with the Soviet propaganda being their sole source of information. He is completely objective, which was possible only thanks to his being an Italian officer; still his objectivity earned him several years of prison. In his reports Malaparte insisted (indirectly of course) that Kaputt was going to be the outcome of the Nazi plans for their "Milllenium-long German State". While Stalin was planning his operations looking at a huge globe of the world in his office, Malaparte describes the war and the Nazism on the level of individual people, both the victims, the perpetrators, or just "small cogs in the war machine". Where else can you read an eye-witness account of a Pogrom that devoured several thousand Jewish people? Where else can you find such an in-depth understanding of the Balkan people, as in Malaparte's encounter with Ante Pavelic, that epitome of a refined bestiality of those lands?
Seemingly detached from the horrors he brings to us and "too objective", his stories burst with moral reflection. My opinion on this book is mixed: as great as some chapters are, equally many are so excessively poetic that the reader misses the point. This is the reason for my rating the book with four stars, not five.

5 people found this helpful

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Shaun Spencer

World War II from the other side. Fascinating.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 5, 2022

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The book is very well written. Interesting accounts of time in Mannerheim's Finland with Agustin de Foxa. Wining, dining and conversing with the Nazi rulers of Poland.

DOGG

Haunting houses of hurt....

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 11, 2011

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FACT OR FICTION? Where do all these tales come from...the imagination, the reality or a mix of the two....inbetween....

Malaparte is a lyrical host to splendour and horror, in the palaces of pain, he lives on the other side of the suffering from 1941-42. his war, in the early stage is a witness to the axis consolditation of power in the east and the north. He dines in style with the mandarins of the lebesnraum,the quislings of the willing partner-nations, their women and their mistresses.

Malaparte is far more of a sympathetic character than I believed, visions flashed across my mind of baleful,cynical narratives of horor without intelligence but then I came back to him, a partner to Celine,an artist. Neither are blameless but they were out to create art, nothing was simple in their minds, not right or wrong, the grey area of real-life.

Large sections of this "account", may be false. The sorry gallery of axis personalities was quite illuminating. Frank,Ciano,Pavlevic and others,overwhelmingly obsessed with tiny details,vainglorius,empty full of intellectual poverty. Malaparte quips and observes but never quite steps out as the voice of morality, more often he is the voice of empty,calm despair.

The "account" swings between battlefronts in russia,finland,romania and then italy,never quite sitting still. The point where this narrative suddenly seems to smack you in the face is the final 25 pages or so,when Malaparte visits Naples,just as Italy had changed sides in WW2. Now he is witnessing and suffering the devastations he cooly observed back on the eastern front. Naples is burning, the people are starving, he is tired,dejected,released from prison and starting to feel the pain of this war.

No account where so much time is spent as a guest of the Axis regime can be read with any real enjoyment but Malaparte is a beautiful.lyrical writer, full of incredible metaphors and imagery. So often his prose soothes the violence and the viciousness in the events he describes and lifts you to a higher plain.

Is this fact or fiction? Nobody seems to know exactly. Malaparte did not witness the pogrom at Jassy in Romania and the Soroca brothel seems to be a sick fantasy but I'm pretty sure 60-70% of this "account" is true and it's a remarkable body of work.

3 people found this helpful

John Fletcher

The evil of banality

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 23, 2013

Verified Purchase

Curzio Malaparte fell out of favour with Mussolini after the publication of his scandalous treatise on how to mount a coup d'état - alas, unavailable in English at the moment. Released from prison he got himself accredited as a war correspondent, and travelled through the Europe of the Third Reich, from Yugoslavia to Finland via the occupied Soviet Union and Poland. This is the secret manuscript he was writing at the time, but instead of battles and heroism, it speaks of boredom, drunkenness, fear, inhumanity and simple stupidity. Most of all it speaks of decay and decline. Partly this is the decay of the inter-war elite of ambassadors and minor aristocrats, more interested in gossip and golf than the Europe which is disintegrating around them. Partly also it is the class of stupid but evil leaders which has arisen to replace them under the lash of war: the Croatian leader Pavelic, who keeps a bucket of human eyes gouged from his enemies on his desk, Heinrich Himmler glimpsed as a white blob in a Finnish sauna. Alles ist kaputt, says Malaparte: even the description of a liberated Italy offers despair and exhaustion, rather than hope.
How much of this is literal truth, and how much is fiction, is not really the point. The story is written with hallucinatory vividness, and is full of surreal scenes which are so bizarre that they probably actually happened. As a report from behind the front lines of the human soul in wartime it is unlikely to be bettered: even if some of it has been rewritten for effect. And what effect.
The translation is generally excellent, although the Afterword, which tries to explain why Malaparte was not writing as a contemporary politically-correct American historian would, adds nothing and may be dispensed with.

8 people found this helpful

Pillowtail

Ambiguity of a Timepiece

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 7, 2008

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Malaparte was an opportunist, social climber, raconteur and political amateur. He was also a gifted writer. How much is truth in this book, and how much is not, is actually irrelevant if one accepts this as the particular document of a fickle man during the war. The book is a series of seemingly unrelated vignettes, his encounters with personalities, most of them reviled. Whether or not Malaparte actually met them, spoke with them as he relates or whether or not he changed his opinion of them as the war for Italy took a downward course is open to conjecture. What he did do however, was to add to the mythology of war and its horrors. Himmler in a Helsinki lift and later a white blob in a sauna, and a murderer; Hans Frank as a cultured pianist, and murderer; the wives, girlfriends, their table talk that comes around always to the murder of Jews.

Kaputt is the title and the meaning is the destruction and end of European "Culture" as it appeared to be in the 1940s. The book does not dwell on war, and if you want a description of war or camps, this is not for you. If you want to experience the ambiguities and contradictions of people under pressure in a highly charged life and death situation, then you will get something from this book. The book was published in 1944 when the war was still going and the extermination of Jews, Gypsies and the "unfit" was taking place and as such is important as being perhaps an indicator that within the elites in the Fascist countries, people (WAGs insluded) - did know what was happening, despite post war denials of this.

6 people found this helpful

Hector Stanislaw De Garza

Great writer

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 12, 2020

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Malaparte visited the eastern theaters on the Axis side as a fascist war correspondent. With fatalistic almost clinical detachment Malaparte narrates his chronicles thinly disguised as a novel.

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