Book description
This is the first unexpurgated English edition of Curzio Malaparte’s legendary work The Skin. The book begins in 1943, with Allied forces cementing their grip on the devastated city of Naples. The sometime Fascist and ever-resourceful Curzio Malaparte is working with the Americans as a liaison officer. He looks after…
Why read it?
1 author picked The Skin as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Set in a world of “faded women” and “ragged boys” where “the price of human flesh was slumping from day to day,” Curzio Malaparte’s The Skin is a fictionalized autobiographical account of life in Southern Italy under the occupation of American forces.
An unforgettable read due to its relentless moral ambiguity, Malaparte refuses to portray anyone as innocent. Occupiers and occupied, victors and defeated, are all trapped within a world where traditional ideas of honor and civilization have disintegrated. His famous dedication to the “brave, good, and humble” American soldiers “who died in vain in the cause of European freedom”…
From Andrew's list on fictionalized accounts of resistance and occupation in World War II.
If you love The Skin...
These Blue Mountains
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
Want books like The Skin?
Our community of 13,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like The Skin.
Share your top 3 reads of 2025!
And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.
1,395
readers submitted
so far, will you?
📚 If you like The Skin, you might also like...
Need to Know
The authoritative but accessible history of the birth of modern American intelligence in World War II that treats not just one but all of the various disciplines: spies, codebreakers, saboteurs.
Told in a relatable style that focuses on actual people, it was a New Yorker "Best of 2022" selection and…
Tsunami
On the morning of December 26, 2004, an undersea earthquake struck off the coast of Sumatra in the Indian Ocean. The resulting tsunami killed an estimated 230,000 people across fourteen countries, from Indonesia to Sri Lanka to Thailand to the Maldives to India and all the way to East Africa.…
