Book description
"The first book of real magnitude to come out of the last war." —John Dos Passos
John Horne Burns brought The Gallery back from World War II, and on publication in 1947 it became a critically-acclaimed bestseller. However, Burns's early death at the age of 36 led to the…
Why read it?
1 author picked The Gallery as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Like the Catch-22 character, Yossarian, Burns spent part of his time as a soldier censoring prisoner-of-war letters. His own prose was considered transgressive for its time. What struck me was not only his subject matter—who else wrote in 1944 about drunken, gay American GIs hanging out in seedy dives in occupied Naples?—but also his tone.
He pulled no punches in depicting the fraught relations and power differentials between occupiers and occupied, not to mention the resentment of the ordinary soldiers toward their superiors. Still, he captured the resilience of the Neapolitans with evocative depictions of street life, and I especially…
From Matthew's list on The best novels on the allied liberation of Italy during World War II.
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