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    Naples '44: An intelligence officer in the Italian labyrinth
    Unavailable
    Naples '44: An intelligence officer in the Italian labyrinth
    Unavailable
    Naples '44: An intelligence officer in the Italian labyrinth
    Ebook241 pages4 hours

    Naples '44: An intelligence officer in the Italian labyrinth

    By Norman Lewis

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Norman Lewis arrived in war-torn Naples as an intelligence officer in 1944. The starving population has devoured all the tropical fish in the aquarium, respectable women had been driven to prostitution and the black market was king. Lewis found little to admire in his fellow soldiers, but gained sustenance from the extraordinary vivacity of the Italians around him - the lawyer who earned his living by bringing a touch of Roman class to funerals, the gynaecologist who specialised in the restoration of lost virginity and the widowed housewife who timed her British lover against the clock. "Were I given the chance to be born again," writes Lewis, "Italy would be the country of my choice."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEland Publishing
    Release dateDec 16, 2011
    ISBN9781780600147
    Unavailable
    Naples '44: An intelligence officer in the Italian labyrinth
    Author

    Norman Lewis

    Norman Lewis (1908–2003) was one of the greatest English-language travel writers. He was the author of thirteen novels and fourteen works of nonfiction, including Naples ’44, The Tomb in Seville, and Voices of the Old Sea. Lewis served in the Allied occupation of Italy during World War II, and reported from Mafia-ruled Sicily and Vietnam under French-colonial rule, among other locations. Born in England, he traveled extensively, living in places including London, Wales, Nicaragua, a Spanish fishing village, and the countryside near Rome.

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    Reviews for Naples '44

    4/5

    104 ratings8 reviews

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    • 5/5
      One of the best books I've read about any war, and it gets better and better as it goes on. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      This is one of the best, if not 'the best', narratives / memoirs of the fighting in Italy during WW II.
    • 4/5
      Diary type reminiscences of a year spent in the region of Naples, 1943-44, by an intelligence officer. Searing account of the hardship and hunger after the allied invasion of Italy, resulting in a host of sordid human failings. Brutal in places, yet the author does find redeeming features amid the tragedies.
    • 2/5
      The book provides a good insight in what happened in Naples and the south of Italy in the years '43-44 when the Allied Liberation Army settled there while preparing their way to Rome. As it is a diary it focuses on the events of the day in the immediate surroundings of its writer. Written with a great deel of sympathy for the Italian people, which is why I liked it. "A year among the Italians had converted me to such an admiration for their humanity and culture," writes Lewis, "that I realise that were I given the chance to be born again and to choose the place of my birth, Italy would be the country of my choice." Still I wouldn't recommend it to anyone unless he is deeply interested in Italian history.
    • 5/5
      This is a fine book, accurate daily participation in history with the addition of Lewis's fine irony. For example, put in charge of Naples security by the Allies, he is given the same offices the Germans had--with all their files. The persons reporting to German security, snitching on their neighbors, were the same ones who reported to Norman Lewis.His account of the workings of Italian courts are vivid, sometimes heartbreaking, as when a father of three is jailed for a year for having army rations. Or when a woman is raped because there are army blankets in her apartment. His descriptions of soldiers, such as the Canadians who use first names with their superior officers, are perceptive, often amusing.Here's his definition of democracy after Mussolini: "The glorious prospect of being able one day to choose their rulers from a list of powerful men, most of whose corruptions are generally known and accepted with weary resignation" (169)
    • 4/5
      This is a diary (edited/reconstructed later) of just over a year in Naples, from September 1943 to October 1944. Norman Lewis arrives in Naples from war work with the Field Security Service in North Africa. Over the course of the year, he feels compassion for the dire poverty and deprivation around him, amazement at the sexual habits of the Neapolitans (which he periodically has to interpret for one British lover), growing disillusionment with the way the occupying forces crack down on petty theft of Allied army property while doing nothing at all about the dealers and profiteers who buy what they have stolen (he believes the black market is largely run by Vito Genovese, New York mafioso turned advisor to the American Military Government).He and his colleagues are supposed to be investigating Nazi collaborators, but find themselves bombarded with allegations - some true, some based on dislike of a neighbour, some intended to get rid of a rival (in legitimate or illegitimate business). He comes to love Italy, although it's clear that far from all of his colleagues share his attempts to understand the place or to behave respectably.This is wonderfully written, whether Lewis is describing an air-raid ("The windows blew in, the blackout screens flapping like enormous bats across the room") or the eruption of Vesuvius: The lava was moving at a rate of only a few yards an hour, and it had covered half the town to a depth of perhaps thirty feet. A complete, undamaged cupola of a church, severed from the submerged building, jogged slowly towards us on its bed of cinders. The whole process was strangely quiet. The black slagheap shook, trembled and jerked a little and cinders rattled down its slope. A house, cautiously encircled and then overwhelmed, disappeared from sight intact, and a faint, distant grinding sound followed as the lava began its digestion.But it's more than just a travel book with an unusual angle. I couldn't help thinking that its portrait of life as a foreign occupier - friendly but out of one's depth in the local society - has a lot of resonance with more current situations.
    • 5/5
      The best book about Italian culture I’ve ever read. Combine that with a book dealing with the conclusion of WWII, and that makes for an absolute winner. Finished: 24.04.2021.
    • 4/5
      This was one of a job lot of books I was given. Felt I should read it, but having no interest in war, it got relegated to a bookcase, After a recent trip to Naples, Igave it a go...and it's actually very interesting.The author was sent over with British forces to Naples - in a state of ruin, starvation and lawlessnessafter the recent German occupation. And while war still continues, with delayed-action mines going off, German bombers flying over, and suspected Nazis hiding in the catacombs - Lewis' duties are more concerned with keeping order, flushing out collaborators and handling situations. It is thus much more of a social history, focussing on bandits and mafiosi, plagues and superstition, the locals trying to keep body and soul together, whether they're plundering the aquarioum for a fish dinner, stealing everything in sight or selling their daughters into prostitution. By turns very funny and tremendously sad, as the author observes the unjust legal system, where the 'Mr Bigs' get away with everything and the petty criminals are given lengthy sentences.