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The Kremlin Ball (New York Review Books Classics) Paperback – April 10, 2018

by Curzio Malaparte (Author), Jenny McPhee (Translator, Foreword)

4.6 14 ratings

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A perverse and delicious tell-all view of the Soviet elite in the 1920s.

Perhaps only the impeccably perverse imagination of Curzio Malaparte could have conceived of The Kremlin Ball, which might be described as Proust in the corridors of Soviet power. Malaparte began this impertinent portrait of Russia's Marxist aristocracy while he was working on The Skin, his story of American-occupied Naples, and after publishing Kaputt, his depiction of Europe in the hands of the Axis, thinking of this book as a another "picture of the truth" and a third panel in a great composition depicting the decadence of twentieth-century Europe. The book is set at the end of the 1920s, when the great terror may have been nothing more than a twinkle in Stalin's eye, but when the revolution was accompanied by a growing sense of doom. In Malaparte's vision it is from his nightly opera box, rather than the Kremlin, that Stalin surveys Soviet high society, its scandals and amours and intrigues among beauties and bureaucrats, including legendary ballerina Marina Semyonova and Olga Kameneva, sister of the exiled Trotsky, who though a powerful politician is so consumed by dread that everywhere she goes she gives off a smell of rotting meat. Unfinished at the time of Malaparte's death, this extraordinary court chronicle of Communist life (for which Malaparte also contemplated the title God is a Killer) was only published posthumously in Italy over fifty years after Malaparte's death and appears in English now for the first time ever.

Print length

240 pages
Language

English
Publisher

NYRB Classics
Publication date

April 10, 2018
Dimensions

5.1 x 0.65 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

1681372096
ISBN-13

978-1681372099
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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

"Malaparte may just be the original postmodernist, at least as far as genre-crossing is concerned…A head-swirling kaleidoscope that, though fictional, is never for a moment fictitious.” —Kirkus Review

“Malaparte enlarged the art of fiction in more perverse, inventive, and darkly liberating ways than one would imagine possible, long before novelists like Philip Roth, Robert Coover, and E. L. Doctorow began using their own and other people’s histories as Play-Doh.” —Gary Indiana

“Surreal, disenchanted, on the edge of amoral, Malaparte broke literary ground for writers from Ryszard Kapuscinski to Joseph Heller.” —Frederika Randall, The Wall Street Journal

“A scrupulous reporter? Probably not. One of the most remarkable writers of the 20twentieth century? Certainly.” —Ian Buruma

About the Author

Curzio Malaparte (pseudonym of Kurt Erich Suckert, 1898–1957) was born in Prato, Italy, and served in World War I. An early supporter of the Italian fascist movement and a prolific journalist, Malaparte soon established himself as an outspoken public figure. In 1931 he incurred Mussolini’s displeasure by publishing a how-to manual entitled Coup d’État: The Technique of Revolution, which led to his arrest and a brief term in prison. During World War II Malaparte worked as a correspondent, for much of the time on the eastern front, and this experience provided the basis for his two most famous books, Kaputt (1944) and The Skin (1949). His political sympathies veered to the left after the war. He continued to write, while also involving himself in the theater and the cinema.

Jenny McPhee is a translator and the author of the novels The Center of Things, No Ordinary Matter, and A Man of No Moon. She translated Natalia Ginzburg's Family Lexicon from the Italian for NYRB Classics. McPhee is the director of the Center of Applied Liberal Arts at New York University and lives in New York.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ NYRB Classics; Main edition (April 10, 2018)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1681372096
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1681372099
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.1 x 0.65 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,110,598 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,599 in Political Fiction (Books)
- #7,739 in Psychological Fiction (Books)
- #14,060 in Psychological Thrillers (Books)

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4.6 14 ratings

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W Means

Post-1917 Moscow

Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2018

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Interesting. What life was like between the 1917 Revolution and World War II in Moscow.

One person found this helpful

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rusoviet

Remarkable commentary on Russia as the 1920's come to a close....

Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2018

Malaparte's recollections were composed in the early 1950's but his recollections seems as fresh as the moment he witnessed them. His knowledge of all things 'soviet' is encyclopedic as he jumps from one famous luminary to another and then to an unknown while explaining to the reader who and what they were - Lunacharsky, Kalinin, Trotsky, Trotsky's sister Madame Kameneva, Mayakovsky, Florinsky (couldn't locate this personality), - a truly well written piece. It tends to repeat itself about certain individuals but it is still worth the read after you get through the first 40+ pages. It is a mere 211 and the last section is a separate story from the preceding text. The author's knowledge of the arts and individuals both in the CCCP and outside it is staggering the detail that he lists considering the brevity of the work and the exhaustive nature. The stories are well done and you see his deep faith in Christ as he makes sure THAT fact is rammed at the red monsters whenever a 3rd party can do so.

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S. Lelarge

A glimpse of Moscow in the 20ties , after the Revolution and before the first major Stalinian purge

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 11, 2022

Verified Purchase

Malaparte is a unique writer...he combines his experience of events, his impressions on those he meets with a lyrical prose that verges on surrealism...this is an unfinished book, not perhaps as polished as one would expect as it was finished posthumously, but it is such a valuable glimpse into those years in Russia between the satisfaction of a revolution accomplished and the fear of what is coming next... the winners of yesterday are today's loosers! Read and enjoy the ride into the last days of Moscow's revolutionary intelligentsia.

Jippu

Soviet High Socity in a close-up

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 24, 2018

Verified Purchase

Curzio Malaparte is an author known for his fantastic stories from the Second World war (one of the most famous is the tableau of frozen horses in Lake Ladoga). He was a former fascist who stayed in the Soviet Union during the late twenties and early thirties and wrote a book about Lenin, becoming more and more leftist, but never a Bolshevik. The Kremlin Ball is an unfinished book with lots of repetition about the Soviet elite during the period when even Trotski was active, but with the hindsight of knowing what had happened (Malaparte started the book only in the forties). The main protagonists are famous communists and their wives, with a mixture of Western diplomats who entertained them. The main interest is in the wives and their luxurious lifestyles before the Terror changed the landscape. As always with Malaparte, the book is best in details, in describing extravagant behaviours and strange personalities, like the Foreign Ministry head of protocol who moved about in Moscow with a horse-drawn carriage, but was very sharp in politics, or the different valuable jewels and clothes that the Bolshevik ladies loved to wear. There is a fascinating atmosphere which feels true, but as with Malaparte always, we will never know which details are really true and which are just his imagination. In the end, it becomes clear that Malaparte takes the side of the new Stalinist Guard and doesn't regret the demise of the Old Bolsheviks, who for him were corrupt and actually much worse than Stalin and his henchmen. Something which we will never know for sure.

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