Kaputt (New York Review Books Classics)

I have been reading literature for almost 50 years and have been teaching it for many, many years. In all of these years I have not found a novel more powerfully written about the horrors, absurdity, and perhaps sheer insanity of WWII and war in general.D M Thomas' Pictures at an Exhibition, among a few others, like Grosssman's Life and Fate, comes closest, however. This is not to deny the power of Homer, Euripides, Tolstoy, Mailer, Vonnegut, et. al. They are all great. But the beauty of Malaparte's images, his enormous power of description, the depiction of our inhumanity to one another and the animal world--the title of each of his sections is an animal, Horses, Mice, etc.--is stunning. Much of his enormous imact is created by a profound sense of irony, as when one of the Black Guard, a nordic "angel" follows him through the Warsaw Ghetto, or the deer with the Nazi flag stuck in its back at a Nazi dinner party, falling under the carving knife of Malaparte's "gracious" hostess, for example. This is a book that should be read slowly and thoughtfully. Malaparte's literary talent will elate you even if the subject matter horrifies you--as it should. This is one of those little-known books that deserves to be universally read and seriously thought about and discussed. Malaparte was one of the great writers of our century and it is wonderful to see his brilliant work back in print.

Fascinating plot

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.

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.

An interesting read, if your gears mesh with Curzio Malaparte's purple prose and Bosch-like evocations. Half the book seems to consist of adjectives, and the curious style (of course this is a translation) sometimes reads like a parody of Proust. It has to be read in the light of Signor Malaparte's exotic personality. He was deeply engaged in Europe's politics, beginning as a Fascist and ending as a Communist, and imbues events with moral and social significance that I find sentimental -- not justified by the evidence. He has a taste for the grotesque, what the Romantics called "the Gothic." For example, he paints a narrative picture of a lake in Finland where lots of horses are frozen in the ice with necks and heads protruding and facing the shore; soldiers sit on the heads as if they were bar stools. Sweet! But most of his imagery, e.g. a sunset like an artery pulsing with blood, is so over the top as to be comical. The book reads like a novel, with long passages of dialog that must be factitious if not fictitious. It would be wrong to take it as a primary source for a history of the war.

The Italian war reporter Malaparte won friends and enemies during his lifetime. From all accounts he was a difficult rogue. However, this probably being true, he was a prince of an observer, a dedicated humorist, a master at lyrical description,clever and sly ,who was born to chronicle the Nazi mind during the Second World War. He was also fearless in his writing, so much so that at the end of Kaputt one is drained and needs no more evidence of the horror of Hitler. Interwoven with the details of the Nazi occupation of Poland is beautiful travelogue of Finland, parts of Russia, and small countries that no longer exist. Scenery in all seasons comes to life as Malaparte knits massacres together with nature. This book is almost a dreamy poem. It eliminates ever reading anything else about the demise of the Jews because no historian has ever offered this tragedy as Malaparte has. The book is the voyage of the writers soul from political stance to relief at being alive at the end of it all. A superb read.

Malaparte’s book is simply amazing. He weaves fact and fiction into a dark lyrical tapestry that completely encapsulates the brutal heart and nature of World War II. But most importantly, and impressively, his understanding and portrayal of the Nazi mind is invaluable. He does not enable the stereotype of the typical jackbooted thug. Malaparte reveals these men, and their women, to be cold, fearful, idealistic, and dour intellectuals, driven by their racial understandings of science and culture. Through this very human portrayal of “smiling monsters,” Malaparte creates an environment of true horror. Malaparte takes us on a journey through hell. With merciless and precise writing, he explores the death and ruin of a war fueled by toxic ideological worldviews. He not only addresses the suffering of its victims, but also the psychology of its perpetrators. For any lover of history, or anyone wanting a clearer understanding of World War II and The Holocaust, Kaputt is a must read. It is an absolute shame that this book does not receive more exposure.

This is among the strangest books dealing with WWII that I've come across. Part novel, part memoir- Kaput is a compelling, grim and often shocking book. It shocks not only because of the gruesome scenes that Malaparte records but also because of the matter of fact and distanced way in which he observes and records them. In some instances his writing reminded me of Camus, existential , unemotional yet witnessing and absorbing minute details of human cruelty. The basic outline is that Malaparte was an Italian army journalist traveling somewhat freely through the Eastern front. His social circle includes obscure royalty from Sweden as well as diplomats from other European countries. He also dines with some high ranking Nazi officials in Poland. Throughout he is either relating stories of things he's observed at the front,or hearing the same from others. Some of the stories are quite shocking but Malaparte himself seems unmoved and unemotional in his telling, never really drawing any conclusions about what he's witnessed or heard. It is hard to judge how much of what is contained is absolutely true, or how much is only loosely based on things Malaparte had either seen or heard. Nevertheless he writes in a very descriptive fashion recording minute details of observation and frequently leading up to some horrible tableu- his language is very visual. These are images that will stick with the reader for some time.

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.

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.

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.

Kaputt shows what is ahead of us. Who does not want to know must not read it. The best and the worst time to read it are now.

I eagerly purchased this book to read what I thought would be a compelling insight by an Italian journalist embedded with the German Army fighting on the East Front. The book has a few moments of interesting insights but it is riddled with facts mixed in with fiction that it is of little value, Curzio Malaparte really missed an opportunity here to give us some first hand insight into daily life on the East Front. He is overly verbose on topics of next to little interest. And when I say verbose, he simply has to describe the minutiae to the point where you simply lose interest and skip to the next thought in the chapter. I am still grasping to find what the point is for this manuscript. I am used to reading Memoirs of Generals and captivated by details of leadership, events, meetings and insight into battles won and lost. You will find next to nothing of this in “KAPUTT”! Other than the smouldering hole left in your wallet! If you enjoy reading a thousand words to describe something that could be adequately wordsmithed down to 100, “KAPUT” might be of some interest to you. For me, it was difficult to read and I pulled next to nothing of value from the experience.