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Naples '44: A World War II Diary of Occupied Italy
From the author Graham Greene called "one of our best writers, not of any particular decade but of our century," comes a masterpiece about a war-ravaged city under occupation
As a young intelligence officer stationed in Naples following its liberation from Nazi forces, Norman Lewis recorded the lives of a proud and vibrant people forced to survive on prostitution, thievery, and a desperate belief in miracles and cures. The most popular of Lewis's twenty-seven books, Naples '44 is a landmark poetic study of the agony of wartime occupation and its ability to bring out the worst, and often the best, in human nature. In prose both heartrending and comic, Lewis describes an era of disillusionment, escapism, and hysteria in which the Allied occupiers mete out justice unfairly and fail to provide basic necessities to the populace while Neapolitan citizens accuse each other of being Nazi spies, women offer their bodies to the same Allied soldiers whose supplies they steal for sale on the black market, and angry young men organize militias to oppose "temporary" foreign rule. Yet over the chaotic din, Lewis sings intimately of the essential dignity of the Neapolitan people, whose traditions of civility, courage, and generosity of spirit shine through on a daily basis. This essential World War II book is as timely a read as ever.
"Norman Lewis is one of the greatest twentieth-century British writers and Naples '44 is his masterpiece. A lyrical, ironic, and detached account of a tempestuous, byzantine, and opaque city in the aftermath of war."--Will Self
As a young intelligence officer stationed in Naples following its liberation from Nazi forces, Norman Lewis recorded the lives of a proud and vibrant people forced to survive on prostitution, thievery, and a desperate belief in miracles and cures. The most popular of Lewis's twenty-seven books, Naples '44 is a landmark poetic study of the agony of wartime occupation and its ability to bring out the worst, and often the best, in human nature. In prose both heartrending and comic, Lewis describes an era of disillusionment, escapism, and hysteria in which the Allied occupiers mete out justice unfairly and fail to provide basic necessities to the populace while Neapolitan citizens accuse each other of being Nazi spies, women offer their bodies to the same Allied soldiers whose supplies they steal for sale on the black market, and angry young men organize militias to oppose "temporary" foreign rule. Yet over the chaotic din, Lewis sings intimately of the essential dignity of the Neapolitan people, whose traditions of civility, courage, and generosity of spirit shine through on a daily basis. This essential World War II book is as timely a read as ever.
"Norman Lewis is one of the greatest twentieth-century British writers and Naples '44 is his masterpiece. A lyrical, ironic, and detached account of a tempestuous, byzantine, and opaque city in the aftermath of war."--Will Self
191 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
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About the author
Norman Lewis
164Ìýbooks138ÌýfollowersNorman Lewis was a prolific British writer best known for his travel writing. Though not widely known, "Norman Lewis is one of the best writers, not of any particular decade, but of our century", according to Graham Greene.
Lewis served in World War II and wrote an account of his experiences during the Allied occupation of Italy, titled Naples '44. Shortly after the war he produced volumes about Burma, titled Golden Earth, and French Indochina, titled A Dragon Apparent. His intrepid boots-on-the-ground view of Vietnam under French colonial domination, without being itself a political rant, gives context to any discussion of the American experience in that battered and subjugated part of the world.
Lewis was fascinated by cultures which were little touched by the modern world. This was reflected in his books on travels in Indonesia, An Empire of the East, and among the tribal peoples of India, A Goddess in the Stones.
Lewis's first wife, Ernestina, was a Swiss-Sicilian aristocrat, and Sicilian life, including the Mafia, was another of his major themes, reflected in The Honoured Society and In Sicily. His treatment of the Mafia was not sensationalist but based on an acute understanding of Sicilian society and a deep sympathy with the sufferings of the Sicilian people, without losing sight of the horrors inflicted by the organization.
Another major concern of Lewis's was the impact of missionary activity on tribal societies in Latin America and elsewhere. He was hostile to the activities of missionaries, especially American evangelicals. This is covered in the volume, Among the Missionaries and several shorter pieces. He frequently said that he regarded his life's major achievement as the worldwide reaction to writing on tribal societies in South America. In 1968, his article "Genocide in Brazil", published in the Sunday Times, created such an outcry that it led to the creation of the organisation Survival International, dedicated to the protection of first peoples around the world.
Lewis wrote several volumes of autobiography, again concerned primarily with his observations of the many places in which he lived at various times, which included St Catherine's Island in South Wales near Tenby, the Bloomsbury district of London during World War II, Nicaragua, a Spanish fishing village, and a village near Rome.
Lewis also wrote twelve novels. Some of these enjoyed significant success at the time of publication, but his reputation rests mainly on his travel writing.
He died in Saffron Walden, Essex, survived by his third wife, Lesley, and their son, Gawaine, and two daughters, Kiki and Samara, and by a son, Gareth, and daughter, Karen, from his second marriage with Hester, and by a son, Ito, from his first marriage. His second son Gareth has recently had a novel published called 'Deceit
Lewis served in World War II and wrote an account of his experiences during the Allied occupation of Italy, titled Naples '44. Shortly after the war he produced volumes about Burma, titled Golden Earth, and French Indochina, titled A Dragon Apparent. His intrepid boots-on-the-ground view of Vietnam under French colonial domination, without being itself a political rant, gives context to any discussion of the American experience in that battered and subjugated part of the world.
Lewis was fascinated by cultures which were little touched by the modern world. This was reflected in his books on travels in Indonesia, An Empire of the East, and among the tribal peoples of India, A Goddess in the Stones.
Lewis's first wife, Ernestina, was a Swiss-Sicilian aristocrat, and Sicilian life, including the Mafia, was another of his major themes, reflected in The Honoured Society and In Sicily. His treatment of the Mafia was not sensationalist but based on an acute understanding of Sicilian society and a deep sympathy with the sufferings of the Sicilian people, without losing sight of the horrors inflicted by the organization.
Another major concern of Lewis's was the impact of missionary activity on tribal societies in Latin America and elsewhere. He was hostile to the activities of missionaries, especially American evangelicals. This is covered in the volume, Among the Missionaries and several shorter pieces. He frequently said that he regarded his life's major achievement as the worldwide reaction to writing on tribal societies in South America. In 1968, his article "Genocide in Brazil", published in the Sunday Times, created such an outcry that it led to the creation of the organisation Survival International, dedicated to the protection of first peoples around the world.
Lewis wrote several volumes of autobiography, again concerned primarily with his observations of the many places in which he lived at various times, which included St Catherine's Island in South Wales near Tenby, the Bloomsbury district of London during World War II, Nicaragua, a Spanish fishing village, and a village near Rome.
Lewis also wrote twelve novels. Some of these enjoyed significant success at the time of publication, but his reputation rests mainly on his travel writing.
He died in Saffron Walden, Essex, survived by his third wife, Lesley, and their son, Gawaine, and two daughters, Kiki and Samara, and by a son, Gareth, and daughter, Karen, from his second marriage with Hester, and by a son, Ito, from his first marriage. His second son Gareth has recently had a novel published called 'Deceit
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February 25, 2025
After serving with the American Fifth Army in Algeria and Tunisia, Norman Lewis, of the British Intelligence Corps, was dumped ashore in Italy along with his team of Americans, to play his role in the Allied effort. With a lack of forward planning and hardly any briefings or guidance - I think he had only one big important mission in the whole book - he records, over the space of nearly a year, his experiences. And it didn't take long to see the desperation, near starvation, and disorganized chaos raining down on the people of Naples.
With bellies rumbling ferociously because of hunger, it was little surprise to see the lengths one would go to just to survive - both legit and, more so, illegal. Including hundreds of folk heading eight miles out of town on foot at 4am to hunt for edible flowers, and mothers offering naked viewings of their pubescent girls at 20 lira a pop. The depravity, despair, and criminal activity running throughout Naples and the surrounding area really was quite staggering. Especially the levels of prostitution; rape and sodomy also - with practically three out of every four women selling their bodies to get by. Some driven totally insane even by the constant Moroccan Goumier and marauder attacks.
Here, to all intents and purposes, we are living in the Middle Ages. Only the buildings had changed - and most of these were in ruins. Epidemics, robbers, funerals followed by shrieking women, deformed and mutilated beggars, legless cripples dragging themselves around on wheeled platforms - even raving lunatics they'd no room for in the asylum. This morning I actually found myself in a little square tucked away among the ruins where women were dancing to drive the sickness away.
Passages like this; and others, including the bizarre meeting with a doctor who specializes in the restoration of virginity, and being witness to group of youths masturbating whilst sat on top of a fountain, reminded me so much of Curzio Malaparte's La pelle (The Skin), and both books do share some of the same ground - albeit Lewis writes in diary form. Both are brilliant when it comes to the details describing the day to day occurrences on the streets of Naples - and again there is General Clark being served the prized specimen from the rapidly depleted Naples aquarium. I loved Malaparte's novel - probably my favourite WW2 novel ever - so it was going to very difficult not to love this too. From the thriving black market to the Camorra, and the eruption of Vesuvius to the more bizarre and absurd incidents and, more importantly; whether right or wrong in some cases, Lewis's full admiration and utter fascination for the resilience and resourcefulness of the Neopolitans, made this such an engrossing read - literally every page of it.
The whole thing could have come off being too dark and depressing; too much death and destruction, but Lewis writes with a trenchant wit - only now and then letting rip with serious fury - that keeps it from feeling that way. Dare I say it, but I even laughed under my breath on a few occasions. It's just the way he went about detailing certain things. Although it was also, in places, distinctly moving, when thinking of a group of escaped blind girls from an orphanage walking hand in hand crying out for food, amongst other things. Got to be a 5/5 for me.
October 23, 2023
This is a wonderful WWII memoir and a good year-in-the-life memoir in Southern Italy, 1944. The late Norman Lewis is especially known for his travel literature but after WWII he wrote of his experiences as an intelligence officer with the Allied invasion of Italy (very small part covers the invasion itself) and then the Allied occupation primarily in Naples. It can be enjoyed as a social and travel history as well as a life in the British military at that time.
He had enlisted as a volunteer and because he spoke several languages he was directed towards Intelligence. He found out later that the officer he interviewed with selected jobs based on eye color. Blue eyes were directed toward Intelligence because he thought they were more trustworthy. Brown eyes—Military Police. Lewis was blue eyed. This was one of the ways Lewis shows the utter whimsy of life in the military. People speaking Spanish were often placed in jobs in Italy because the uppers thought the two languages looked similar. This was “Intelligence.�
In any case Lewis has great stories from landing in the lower “boot� through chasing the retreating German army northwards. When not dealing with the ridiculousness of military life he gets to know the population. That’s where it gets really interesting. He obviously liked the people wherever he was stationed and managed to find humor in all the situations.
He is put to vetting citizens for jobs working for the military. It wasn’t that easy to filter out the recent Fascists and the mafia. Then there were the denunciations by neighbors and the self serving. Tedious work. He was normally the only Italian speaker among his military section. The population was starving and anxious for work or a handout for spying on their neighbors. Lewis tended to look the other way unless the crimes were too egregious and often passed out a can of whatever military food that they had on hand to the very miserable people he came in contact with. He tells the reader that the Warfare Bureau figured that 65% of the net per capita income of Neapolitans came from stolen army supplies. Dresses crafted from British coats were everywhere. British long johns were commonly dyed red and sold as track suits.
One of the Italian friends he made was an impoverished unemployed attorney whose sideline was renting himself out as a well-off uncle from Rome at local funerals. He’d catch the train one station north of Naples and appear at the funeral looking dignified in a tattered old dress suit speaking with a Roman accent. Any proper funeral had to have such an uncle. The poor man was cadaverously thin and lived in a bare ancestral palazzo.
Lewis� 1944 memoir is full of such fascinating stories. He does not make fun of the people and in fact really enjoys their pluck and creativity.
Highly recommended.
He had enlisted as a volunteer and because he spoke several languages he was directed towards Intelligence. He found out later that the officer he interviewed with selected jobs based on eye color. Blue eyes were directed toward Intelligence because he thought they were more trustworthy. Brown eyes—Military Police. Lewis was blue eyed. This was one of the ways Lewis shows the utter whimsy of life in the military. People speaking Spanish were often placed in jobs in Italy because the uppers thought the two languages looked similar. This was “Intelligence.�
In any case Lewis has great stories from landing in the lower “boot� through chasing the retreating German army northwards. When not dealing with the ridiculousness of military life he gets to know the population. That’s where it gets really interesting. He obviously liked the people wherever he was stationed and managed to find humor in all the situations.
He is put to vetting citizens for jobs working for the military. It wasn’t that easy to filter out the recent Fascists and the mafia. Then there were the denunciations by neighbors and the self serving. Tedious work. He was normally the only Italian speaker among his military section. The population was starving and anxious for work or a handout for spying on their neighbors. Lewis tended to look the other way unless the crimes were too egregious and often passed out a can of whatever military food that they had on hand to the very miserable people he came in contact with. He tells the reader that the Warfare Bureau figured that 65% of the net per capita income of Neapolitans came from stolen army supplies. Dresses crafted from British coats were everywhere. British long johns were commonly dyed red and sold as track suits.
One of the Italian friends he made was an impoverished unemployed attorney whose sideline was renting himself out as a well-off uncle from Rome at local funerals. He’d catch the train one station north of Naples and appear at the funeral looking dignified in a tattered old dress suit speaking with a Roman accent. Any proper funeral had to have such an uncle. The poor man was cadaverously thin and lived in a bare ancestral palazzo.
Lewis� 1944 memoir is full of such fascinating stories. He does not make fun of the people and in fact really enjoys their pluck and creativity.
Highly recommended.
December 28, 2018
It was quite a different sort of autobiographical account to read the daily diary entries of Norman Lewis about his experiences as a U.K. intelligence officer in Naples when he was stationed there for a year just after the Germans left in 1944. It was fascinating to read how he had to deal with all the plundering, bribery and prostitution in the city. People were starving and would do anything in their power to get food and protect their families. Lewis certainly dealt with all the turmoil in a surprisingly relaxed and humorous way. As he notes, only 1/4 of all the Allied shipments, whether food or equipment, arrived at their proper destination and army equipment is widely sold in the Naples street markets. He notes there was not a single house in Naples that did not have British, American or Canadian blankets. Lewis accepted this as facts he could not do much about and, in my opinion, rightfully so. The hardest part of his job was to deal with the excesses of the Camora which held the real power in the region. Just as it does today.
A very informative account with lots of astonishing anecdotes. Lewis describes his daily life in Naples with alot of humour. I thought his diary was a fascinating read.
A very informative account with lots of astonishing anecdotes. Lewis describes his daily life in Naples with alot of humour. I thought his diary was a fascinating read.
April 24, 2016
I have a GR virtual bookshelf for "WWII" and this is the 39th book to be added to it. None of the other 38 are anything like this. A journal written at the time with the author's immediate impressions, and providing a view of the conflict that I personally hadn't encountered before.
The account starts with the landings at Salerno, and from the author's perspective the event was one of confusion, widespread panic, deaths from "friendly fire", and all round ineptitude, with results that varied from the comic to the tragic. The narrative then moves on to the Allied occupation of Naples. The author's Italian language skills led him to be posted to something called"The Field Security Service". It seems to have been a sort of frontline version of M.I.5, responsible for rooting out enemy agents, saboteurs etc, although Mr Lewis seems to have spent much of his time checking on the background of Italian women seeking to marry British servicemen.
When the Allied troops arrived in Naples the population was starving, and a large proportion of the female population was forced into at least part time prostitution, simply to obtain food. The author also describes how the population quickly organised mass theft of supplies from the Allied Army, to the extent that military hospitals were sometimes so short of medicines that they had to buy them back from those who stole them. The author's sympathies lay entirely with the civilian population, and he was very much of the view that senior commanders/staff of the Allied Military Government were involved in racketeering.
It's probably the case that the author saw Naples through the telescope of his job in Field Security, but that job, and his language skills, allowed him something of a window into a section of Neapolitan society, and the reader is treated to images that range from the astonishing to the horrifying. Overall though, the author describes being an outsider - a cog in a machine trying, and largely failing, to govern a society with social norms the occupiers did not understand.
A fascinating account of a society under extreme stress.
The account starts with the landings at Salerno, and from the author's perspective the event was one of confusion, widespread panic, deaths from "friendly fire", and all round ineptitude, with results that varied from the comic to the tragic. The narrative then moves on to the Allied occupation of Naples. The author's Italian language skills led him to be posted to something called"The Field Security Service". It seems to have been a sort of frontline version of M.I.5, responsible for rooting out enemy agents, saboteurs etc, although Mr Lewis seems to have spent much of his time checking on the background of Italian women seeking to marry British servicemen.
When the Allied troops arrived in Naples the population was starving, and a large proportion of the female population was forced into at least part time prostitution, simply to obtain food. The author also describes how the population quickly organised mass theft of supplies from the Allied Army, to the extent that military hospitals were sometimes so short of medicines that they had to buy them back from those who stole them. The author's sympathies lay entirely with the civilian population, and he was very much of the view that senior commanders/staff of the Allied Military Government were involved in racketeering.
It's probably the case that the author saw Naples through the telescope of his job in Field Security, but that job, and his language skills, allowed him something of a window into a section of Neapolitan society, and the reader is treated to images that range from the astonishing to the horrifying. Overall though, the author describes being an outsider - a cog in a machine trying, and largely failing, to govern a society with social norms the occupiers did not understand.
A fascinating account of a society under extreme stress.
September 10, 2019
Norman Lewis, the author of this book, writes in diary format of his time in and around Naples from September 1943 to October 1944. He served as a sergeant in the Field Security Service of the British Army Intelligence Corps after the city’s recent liberation from Nazi control.
Each day’s entry is short, sometimes only a paragraph or two. He writes of the chaos of wartime occupation and the sufferings of the Neapolitan people. Famine and disease, filth and vermin, rampant prostitution and rape, black-marketing, profiteering and banditry were daily concerns. His job was aimed at providing security for British troops. Occupation by the Allied forces failed to mete out justice and failed to provide the most basic public services.
In the confusion and pandemonium of the time, the Neapolitans� unswerving belief in saints and miracles is mind boggling.
All such is noted and recorded in detail.
The author imparts a vivid sense of time and place. He describes well not only the all-pervading chaos but also conveys his appreciation of the Neapolitans� spirit, generosity and courage which he observed.
Nicholas Boulton narrates the audiobook well. I would have preferred he read a bit more slowly. The Italian words go by in a blur, but I would not have understood them anyhow. The narration I have given three stars.
**
* by TBR
Each day’s entry is short, sometimes only a paragraph or two. He writes of the chaos of wartime occupation and the sufferings of the Neapolitan people. Famine and disease, filth and vermin, rampant prostitution and rape, black-marketing, profiteering and banditry were daily concerns. His job was aimed at providing security for British troops. Occupation by the Allied forces failed to mete out justice and failed to provide the most basic public services.
In the confusion and pandemonium of the time, the Neapolitans� unswerving belief in saints and miracles is mind boggling.
All such is noted and recorded in detail.
The author imparts a vivid sense of time and place. He describes well not only the all-pervading chaos but also conveys his appreciation of the Neapolitans� spirit, generosity and courage which he observed.
Nicholas Boulton narrates the audiobook well. I would have preferred he read a bit more slowly. The Italian words go by in a blur, but I would not have understood them anyhow. The narration I have given three stars.
**
* by TBR
March 6, 2018
Harrowing, unsparing, penetrating -- yet throughout profoundly humane -- this reminiscence restores the good name of memoir. NAPLES '44 details, via diary entries no doubt reworked for the book's mid-1970s publication, Norman Lewis' experience as a community liaison between the Allied occupiers and the locals, in the devastated Southern Italian metropolis of Naples following the Nazi withdrawal of September 1943. Every entry offers a bracing corrective to dimwitted American notions of "the good war," yet each is suffused as well with a respect for Naples and the Neapolitans, all the more genuine for how its thoroughly informed. Lewis comprehends the full complexity of an urban environment raked by millennia of exploitation; he admires the city-dwellers' keen eye for the lesser evil, rooted in their sighing awareness that evil will insinuate itself into every corner bar and city block. NAPLES '44 has stayed with me like few books I've read, over the decades, and not simply because of its shocking war stories, its revelations about the Mafia, its chronicles of starvation and making do. More than that, the book illuminates by demonstrating a light that failed: it presents an early test case for how the dewey-eyed belief in Anglo-American rightness leads to such murderous and pointless horror as Vietnam and Iraq.
September 18, 2019
This is a delightful memoir, diary really, by an author whose work I hope to encounter again. This isn't a tale of derring-do by a fearless commando. Lewis is an intelligent and tender-hearted citizen of the world thrust reluctantly into a wartime situation where he sees little actual warfare. In fact, he had a Webley revolver (aka known as the "wobbly Webley" by anyone who used it) thrust upon him at embarkation with 5 rounds of ammunition. Apparently he had never fired the weapon in training and held true to that throughout the war, retaining the same 5 rounds for the duration.
Lewis was employed in the capacity of intelligence officer, a sort of pseudo-policeman on liaison duties with the locals. In this capacity he sees little combat, but witnesses firsthand the detritus of war and the effect it has on the city of Naples and environs. Because he is recording observations in a diary not necessarily meant for publication, he can be very frank and open in his observations. He was generally unimpressed with the indiscipline of American troops and comments on the brutality of one British officer who beat a civilian during an interrogation and then ordered a nearby soldier to shoot him. I was happy to note that Canadian troops with whom he worked left a favourable impression on him.
Lewis was ideally situated to witness the corruption of Italian officials, particularly police and prison officials. He had frequent dealings with deserters and bandits (often one and the same), prostitutes, gangsters, and black market smugglers. And while he gives these characters their due, it is the poor, starving, bombed-out disease ridden civilians of Naples that get Lewis' sympathy. He is truly compassionate to these unfortunate people, and to his credit does not take advantage when he is offered some hapless sister or daughter in exchange for a can of rations.
Although this is a diary, it is not written in an abbreviated point form like one might expect in a document meant only to be read by oneself. In fact, the writing is on par with anything produced by any novelist of the time. While Lewis may not have been a frontline soldier, his book is nonetheless an outstanding read given to us by an observer with a sharp eye and a tender heart. I am quite sure that I will be reading it again.
Lewis was employed in the capacity of intelligence officer, a sort of pseudo-policeman on liaison duties with the locals. In this capacity he sees little combat, but witnesses firsthand the detritus of war and the effect it has on the city of Naples and environs. Because he is recording observations in a diary not necessarily meant for publication, he can be very frank and open in his observations. He was generally unimpressed with the indiscipline of American troops and comments on the brutality of one British officer who beat a civilian during an interrogation and then ordered a nearby soldier to shoot him. I was happy to note that Canadian troops with whom he worked left a favourable impression on him.
Lewis was ideally situated to witness the corruption of Italian officials, particularly police and prison officials. He had frequent dealings with deserters and bandits (often one and the same), prostitutes, gangsters, and black market smugglers. And while he gives these characters their due, it is the poor, starving, bombed-out disease ridden civilians of Naples that get Lewis' sympathy. He is truly compassionate to these unfortunate people, and to his credit does not take advantage when he is offered some hapless sister or daughter in exchange for a can of rations.
Although this is a diary, it is not written in an abbreviated point form like one might expect in a document meant only to be read by oneself. In fact, the writing is on par with anything produced by any novelist of the time. While Lewis may not have been a frontline soldier, his book is nonetheless an outstanding read given to us by an observer with a sharp eye and a tender heart. I am quite sure that I will be reading it again.
November 8, 2022
It would be impossible to publish Naples diaries of Norman Lewis right after the war. The world was busy glorifying and romanticizing the great allied victory, creating myths and heroes of the modern age, thus paving the way for new wars to come.
Lewis takes a different point of view. For him, the war effort, the involvement of the allied armies is a necessary evil. It is necessary but it is evil nevertheless. The actual war events take second stage, are mentioned in passing if mentioned at all; the focus is on people, on individual and collective tragedies, on hunger, on humiliation, on senseless loss of lives.
It is not surprising that the book was eventually published in 1978 after another prolonged military conflict has changed the perception of war in public consciousness.
Frankly pacifist attitude of the author, who does not fire a single shot during his military service in Italy, is interesting but not unique. What makes this book special is the style of writing: laconic, subdued, detached. Almost matter-of-fact descriptions of truly terrifying scenes make them stand out even more, creating a cinematic effect. Here are two examples:
"A number of buildings including a bank had been pulverized by a terrific explosion that had clearly just taken place. Bodies were scattered all over the street, but here and there among them stood the living as motionless as statues, and all coated in thick white dust... the silence was total."
"In Pizzo-Falcone a team of roadsweepers were working by lamplight clearing up what looked like a lake of spilled stew where a crowded shelter had received a direct hit."
The format of the diary that initially elevates this book later becomes its most significant drawback. As life slowly normalizes in the South of Italy in 1944, the narration downshifts from strongly disturbing and horrifying events into a series of anecdotes and observations about local customs, stories of love, deception, beliefs, and curiosities. These anecdotes are told with humor and compassion, they are not at all judgmental. Still, the intensity is lower. The book starts with a bang and ends with somewhat of a whimper.
I must share one more quote that does come towards the end of the book. It touches on a point that can be almost identically applied to our times and our newest wars:
"... in their hearts, these people must be thoroughly sick and tired of us. A year ago we liberated them from the Fascist Monster, and they still sit doing their best to smile politely at us, as hungry as ever, more disease-ridden than ever before, in the ruins of their beautiful city where law and order have ceased to exist. And what is the prize that is to be eventually won? The rebirth of democracy. 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. The days of Benito Mussolini must seem like a lost paradise compared with this."
I am looking forward to many more silent conversations with Norman Lewis in various places around the world covered in his books.
Liam, my friend, thank you for this gift!
Lewis takes a different point of view. For him, the war effort, the involvement of the allied armies is a necessary evil. It is necessary but it is evil nevertheless. The actual war events take second stage, are mentioned in passing if mentioned at all; the focus is on people, on individual and collective tragedies, on hunger, on humiliation, on senseless loss of lives.
It is not surprising that the book was eventually published in 1978 after another prolonged military conflict has changed the perception of war in public consciousness.
Frankly pacifist attitude of the author, who does not fire a single shot during his military service in Italy, is interesting but not unique. What makes this book special is the style of writing: laconic, subdued, detached. Almost matter-of-fact descriptions of truly terrifying scenes make them stand out even more, creating a cinematic effect. Here are two examples:
"A number of buildings including a bank had been pulverized by a terrific explosion that had clearly just taken place. Bodies were scattered all over the street, but here and there among them stood the living as motionless as statues, and all coated in thick white dust... the silence was total."
"In Pizzo-Falcone a team of roadsweepers were working by lamplight clearing up what looked like a lake of spilled stew where a crowded shelter had received a direct hit."
The format of the diary that initially elevates this book later becomes its most significant drawback. As life slowly normalizes in the South of Italy in 1944, the narration downshifts from strongly disturbing and horrifying events into a series of anecdotes and observations about local customs, stories of love, deception, beliefs, and curiosities. These anecdotes are told with humor and compassion, they are not at all judgmental. Still, the intensity is lower. The book starts with a bang and ends with somewhat of a whimper.
I must share one more quote that does come towards the end of the book. It touches on a point that can be almost identically applied to our times and our newest wars:
"... in their hearts, these people must be thoroughly sick and tired of us. A year ago we liberated them from the Fascist Monster, and they still sit doing their best to smile politely at us, as hungry as ever, more disease-ridden than ever before, in the ruins of their beautiful city where law and order have ceased to exist. And what is the prize that is to be eventually won? The rebirth of democracy. 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. The days of Benito Mussolini must seem like a lost paradise compared with this."
I am looking forward to many more silent conversations with Norman Lewis in various places around the world covered in his books.
Liam, my friend, thank you for this gift!
August 2, 2013
Disclaimer: I got a copy via Netgalley.
Have you ever read the transcripts from the Titanic inquiry? It’s a rather interesting look at what various British people thought of the rest of the barbarians, except for the Americans. In some places, Lewis� diary of his wartime experiences in Naples mirror those transcripts, but this time the Americans are part of the barbarians.
One of the most interesting parts of reading this diary is how slowly, subtlety Lewis� views change. He eventually falls in love with the country and reading those passages is true wonderful. His most descriptive work in the diary is there. Part of this change might be tied to hospitality, for his hosts never let him eat army rations, but feed him from their own merge supplies.
But the real reason to read this diary is to see how the Allies interacted with the Italians, once German allies but who are liberated by the Americans, British and Canadians. It is just the treatment of the Italians by the Allies, but how one British man viewed everything.
In some cases, Lewis’s observations and his frustrations are funny. He has to deal with Italians who are arrested for cutting wire. This, the Italian in question might point out, is exactly what the British asked him to do, why are they arresting him for it? And then he finds himself immersed in some type of Mafia vendetta that he can’t understand. He doesn’t write it, but his description of the event almost screams, “Didn’t these Europeans read Romeo and Juliet?� There is the court, which is, well, let’s just say people get themselves lost in jail.
But the issues that concerns this officer the most and the issue that is most disquieting to readers several years removed is the obsession women. Lewis only seems to be obsessed with women because his job calls on him to be. These wicked Italian women, getting their hooks into the pure innocent British boys must be checked out before they are allowed to marry the man. This is one of Lewis� jobs, and he seems to think worse of the British men, for not knowing how to handle love affairs, then the women whom at times he admires for their ability to survive. He admires a Countess who at one point in life wrestled pythons and might have killed her husband on their wedding night with passion. Another woman arranges to appear richer than she actually is. But he also, in many ways, is disquieted by the women. Early on in Naples, Lewis is offered a young girl by the girl’s father, who noticed Lewis looking at his daughter. The father does this so the daughter can eat. There is a woman who prostitutes her daughter, and a very young girl forced to prostitute to herself. The disquiet arises from a line about Italian women in rape; Lewis writes that the Italian women don’t seem to be upset if they are raped. Combined with the prostitution, the rape line causes the reader to wonder what the young Lewis may not (or at least did not record), how much of the women’s behavior is due to the years of war, to what today we would call PTSD. In many ways, these sections of the diary shine a light on an aspect of the Second World War that is often overlooked.
It isn’t a diary with big battles, there are some battles, but it is an interesting chronicle of the war. Well worth reading.
Have you ever read the transcripts from the Titanic inquiry? It’s a rather interesting look at what various British people thought of the rest of the barbarians, except for the Americans. In some places, Lewis� diary of his wartime experiences in Naples mirror those transcripts, but this time the Americans are part of the barbarians.
One of the most interesting parts of reading this diary is how slowly, subtlety Lewis� views change. He eventually falls in love with the country and reading those passages is true wonderful. His most descriptive work in the diary is there. Part of this change might be tied to hospitality, for his hosts never let him eat army rations, but feed him from their own merge supplies.
But the real reason to read this diary is to see how the Allies interacted with the Italians, once German allies but who are liberated by the Americans, British and Canadians. It is just the treatment of the Italians by the Allies, but how one British man viewed everything.
In some cases, Lewis’s observations and his frustrations are funny. He has to deal with Italians who are arrested for cutting wire. This, the Italian in question might point out, is exactly what the British asked him to do, why are they arresting him for it? And then he finds himself immersed in some type of Mafia vendetta that he can’t understand. He doesn’t write it, but his description of the event almost screams, “Didn’t these Europeans read Romeo and Juliet?� There is the court, which is, well, let’s just say people get themselves lost in jail.
But the issues that concerns this officer the most and the issue that is most disquieting to readers several years removed is the obsession women. Lewis only seems to be obsessed with women because his job calls on him to be. These wicked Italian women, getting their hooks into the pure innocent British boys must be checked out before they are allowed to marry the man. This is one of Lewis� jobs, and he seems to think worse of the British men, for not knowing how to handle love affairs, then the women whom at times he admires for their ability to survive. He admires a Countess who at one point in life wrestled pythons and might have killed her husband on their wedding night with passion. Another woman arranges to appear richer than she actually is. But he also, in many ways, is disquieted by the women. Early on in Naples, Lewis is offered a young girl by the girl’s father, who noticed Lewis looking at his daughter. The father does this so the daughter can eat. There is a woman who prostitutes her daughter, and a very young girl forced to prostitute to herself. The disquiet arises from a line about Italian women in rape; Lewis writes that the Italian women don’t seem to be upset if they are raped. Combined with the prostitution, the rape line causes the reader to wonder what the young Lewis may not (or at least did not record), how much of the women’s behavior is due to the years of war, to what today we would call PTSD. In many ways, these sections of the diary shine a light on an aspect of the Second World War that is often overlooked.
It isn’t a diary with big battles, there are some battles, but it is an interesting chronicle of the war. Well worth reading.
July 15, 2024
Norman Lewis spent the war in a unit that investigated criminal and counter-intelligence cases. He arrived in Italy as part of the invasion of Salerno, where his platoon was attached in support of the US Fifth Army. His initial impressions were not favorable. While front-line troops had to have some discipline just to do their duty and to survive, the rear-echelon was complete chaos. He saw officers abandoning their soldiers during a German counterattack, and troops being ordered out of their transport so that it could be loaded with cases of stolen wine.
When the Germans launched a major attack, the only thing that saved the Fifth Army was the presence of navy ships, including battleships, just off the coast, which were able to pound the front lines. Otherwise the entire Salerno front might well have been rolled up and destroyed. Lewis writes, “Official history will in due time set to work to dress up this part of the action at Salerno with what dignity it can. What we saw was ineptitude and cowardice spreading down from the command, and this resulted in chaos.� And of course, it is exactly this sanitized and heroicized version of the battle that is presented in history books today.
He then spent the rest of 1943 and most of 1944 in and around Naples, which was partially destroyed, starving, and in utter disarray. To say that corruption was rampant is an understatement, because corruption was the lifeblood of the city. For many it was the only way to survive, and for some it was an opportunity to make millions.
Just as Prohibition in the United States had ushered in organized crime, which became entrenched and remains an element of large-scale criminal activity and drug sales, the Allied occupation of Italy resulted in the second coming of criminal organizations such as the Mafia in Sicily and the Camorra in the Naples area. Mussolini had largely destroyed these groups in their overt forms by using mass arrests and internal exile, and had driven the rest underground.
The Americans threw open the prisons when criminals claimed they had been jailed for patriotic partisan activities, not criminal ones. In fact, the power behind the throne of AMGOT, the Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories, was Vito Genovese, formerly second in command to Lucky Luciano in New York, who fled to Naples in 1937 to escape prosecution for murder. The military thought he could be useful in rooting out fascists and German sympathizers, and he quickly became one of AMGOT’s most trusted employees. In this role he was able to place Camorra members as mayors and police chiefs in cities and towns throughout the region.
By 1944 the scale of corruption in Italy was breathtaking. Entire ships were being taken over in the harbor and plundered, as well as trains carrying weapons and supplies to the front lines. “According to the Psychological Warfare Bureau’s bulletin sixty-five per cent of the per capita income of Neapolitans derives from transactions in stolen Allied supplies, and one-third of all supplies and equipment imported continued to disappear into the black market.�
And of course, no one ever saw anything. Omerta, the code of silence, was strictly observed, even when criminal reprisals were not a concern, because locals did not talk about such things to outsiders. The criminal justice system was a farce: a poor man caught with some possibly stolen copper wire faced decades in prison, while the powerful and well connected laughed at the thought of prosecution, because with the support of AMGOT they knew they were untouchable.
The Italians who did not have connections were left to muddle through as best they could. Starvation was a real concern for months after the Allied occupation, and feeding one’s family required ingenuity and moral flexibility. At the exchange rates then in effect, American privates were paid the equivalent of senior Italian engineers and doctors, and they seemed to have access to limitless supplies of pilfered food, clothing, and army goods to trade for sex or other services. When penicillin was almost non-existent in army hospitals, theft had made it widely available in local pharmacies.
The eternal trade-off in politics is freedom versus order. For all of fascism’s brutality, it had kept order, and the Allied occupation replaced it with chaos and criminality.
Despite the hardships, most Italians responded to the situation with grace and humor, doing their best not just to survive, but to hold to the civilized behavior which is a hallmark of Italy. They kept their festivals and religious processions even when they could have been out scrounging for food, and they earned Lewis’s respect for their dignity, humanity, and culture.
When the Germans launched a major attack, the only thing that saved the Fifth Army was the presence of navy ships, including battleships, just off the coast, which were able to pound the front lines. Otherwise the entire Salerno front might well have been rolled up and destroyed. Lewis writes, “Official history will in due time set to work to dress up this part of the action at Salerno with what dignity it can. What we saw was ineptitude and cowardice spreading down from the command, and this resulted in chaos.� And of course, it is exactly this sanitized and heroicized version of the battle that is presented in history books today.
He then spent the rest of 1943 and most of 1944 in and around Naples, which was partially destroyed, starving, and in utter disarray. To say that corruption was rampant is an understatement, because corruption was the lifeblood of the city. For many it was the only way to survive, and for some it was an opportunity to make millions.
Just as Prohibition in the United States had ushered in organized crime, which became entrenched and remains an element of large-scale criminal activity and drug sales, the Allied occupation of Italy resulted in the second coming of criminal organizations such as the Mafia in Sicily and the Camorra in the Naples area. Mussolini had largely destroyed these groups in their overt forms by using mass arrests and internal exile, and had driven the rest underground.
The Americans threw open the prisons when criminals claimed they had been jailed for patriotic partisan activities, not criminal ones. In fact, the power behind the throne of AMGOT, the Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories, was Vito Genovese, formerly second in command to Lucky Luciano in New York, who fled to Naples in 1937 to escape prosecution for murder. The military thought he could be useful in rooting out fascists and German sympathizers, and he quickly became one of AMGOT’s most trusted employees. In this role he was able to place Camorra members as mayors and police chiefs in cities and towns throughout the region.
By 1944 the scale of corruption in Italy was breathtaking. Entire ships were being taken over in the harbor and plundered, as well as trains carrying weapons and supplies to the front lines. “According to the Psychological Warfare Bureau’s bulletin sixty-five per cent of the per capita income of Neapolitans derives from transactions in stolen Allied supplies, and one-third of all supplies and equipment imported continued to disappear into the black market.�
And of course, no one ever saw anything. Omerta, the code of silence, was strictly observed, even when criminal reprisals were not a concern, because locals did not talk about such things to outsiders. The criminal justice system was a farce: a poor man caught with some possibly stolen copper wire faced decades in prison, while the powerful and well connected laughed at the thought of prosecution, because with the support of AMGOT they knew they were untouchable.
The Italians who did not have connections were left to muddle through as best they could. Starvation was a real concern for months after the Allied occupation, and feeding one’s family required ingenuity and moral flexibility. At the exchange rates then in effect, American privates were paid the equivalent of senior Italian engineers and doctors, and they seemed to have access to limitless supplies of pilfered food, clothing, and army goods to trade for sex or other services. When penicillin was almost non-existent in army hospitals, theft had made it widely available in local pharmacies.
The eternal trade-off in politics is freedom versus order. For all of fascism’s brutality, it had kept order, and the Allied occupation replaced it with chaos and criminality.
A year ago we liberated them from the Fascist Monster, and they still sit doing their best to smile politely at us, as hungry as ever, more disease-ridden than ever before, in the ruins of their beautiful city where law and order have ceased to exist. And what is the prize that is to be eventually won? The rebirth of democracy. 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. The days of Benito Mussolini must seem like a lost paradise compared with this.
Despite the hardships, most Italians responded to the situation with grace and humor, doing their best not just to survive, but to hold to the civilized behavior which is a hallmark of Italy. They kept their festivals and religious processions even when they could have been out scrounging for food, and they earned Lewis’s respect for their dignity, humanity, and culture.
April 22, 2013
I have lived as an expat in Naples for three and a half years now, and have a small library of English language books on Naples, my adopted city. This one is perhaps the best, and certainly one of the most entertaining. In summary, the book is the autobiographical account of a British counterintelligence officer in Allied occupied wartime Naples. The account takes place after the invasion of Sicily and before the liberation of Rome. My maternal grandfather was with Patton's 3ID and at Anzio and was wounded at Monte Cassino. Reading the book, I couldn't help but wonder if he and Lewis ever crossed paths.
Although Lewis tries gamely to ferret out the Fascists allegedly hiding in the wainscoting, the real protagonists of the story are the Neapolitans themselves, desperately trying to survive during a war induced famine. Almost seventy years later, my personal perceptions and observations of Naples are strikingly similar - like looking in a mirror across time.
Naples is brimming with the most charming villains on the face of the planet, and Lewis captures their schemes perfectly, like the literary equivalent of an insect in amber. His pen records it all: the desperate and wildly passionate love of food, life, and even the idea of love itself. He faithfully documents the hopelessly Byzantine maze of vendettas, grievances, machinations, and even the ubiquitous tentacles of organized crime. Frankly, this book is a classic. If you have any interest whatsoever in the history of Naples, you should read this book. My only contention - if it can be called such - is Lewis is too honest. He captures the proud Neapolitans at their very worst, when starvation, prostitution, and chicanery are at their apex. It is sad to read of Naples and Neapolitans in such dire straits. But Neapolitans are nothing if not survivors, and they do so, with their own special rapscallion blend of equal parts villainy and grace.
Lewis himself survived the war and went on to become one of Britain's premier travel writers. He wrote books on the Sicilian mafia (totally separate Neapolitan organized crime, the Camorra) and about his travels throughout Southeast Asia. Lewis is a witty and worldly literary travel companion, and you can rest assured I will be reading - and reviewing - his other works.
Although Lewis tries gamely to ferret out the Fascists allegedly hiding in the wainscoting, the real protagonists of the story are the Neapolitans themselves, desperately trying to survive during a war induced famine. Almost seventy years later, my personal perceptions and observations of Naples are strikingly similar - like looking in a mirror across time.
Naples is brimming with the most charming villains on the face of the planet, and Lewis captures their schemes perfectly, like the literary equivalent of an insect in amber. His pen records it all: the desperate and wildly passionate love of food, life, and even the idea of love itself. He faithfully documents the hopelessly Byzantine maze of vendettas, grievances, machinations, and even the ubiquitous tentacles of organized crime. Frankly, this book is a classic. If you have any interest whatsoever in the history of Naples, you should read this book. My only contention - if it can be called such - is Lewis is too honest. He captures the proud Neapolitans at their very worst, when starvation, prostitution, and chicanery are at their apex. It is sad to read of Naples and Neapolitans in such dire straits. But Neapolitans are nothing if not survivors, and they do so, with their own special rapscallion blend of equal parts villainy and grace.
Lewis himself survived the war and went on to become one of Britain's premier travel writers. He wrote books on the Sicilian mafia (totally separate Neapolitan organized crime, the Camorra) and about his travels throughout Southeast Asia. Lewis is a witty and worldly literary travel companion, and you can rest assured I will be reading - and reviewing - his other works.
June 14, 2019
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). Applying this to the 2016 US election of a Liar-in-
Chief, I add from Julian Gray's thorough review.
Perhaps the non-reading US who elected our first TV, non-reading, prez share the Welsh townships' love of Liars: � in the old Wales each village had what the writer D. J. Williams called its own Transparent Liar, a man who reigned in pubs and farmhouse kitchens, the fun being derived from the fact that his audience knew, and he knew they knew, that he was lying.� (Byron Rogers, 2008 Spectator review) But the Welsh towns did not elect the Liar mayor, or Prime Minister.
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). Applying this to the 2016 US election of a Liar-in-
Chief, I add from Julian Gray's thorough review.
Perhaps the non-reading US who elected our first TV, non-reading, prez share the Welsh townships' love of Liars: � in the old Wales each village had what the writer D. J. Williams called its own Transparent Liar, a man who reigned in pubs and farmhouse kitchens, the fun being derived from the fact that his audience knew, and he knew they knew, that he was lying.� (Byron Rogers, 2008 Spectator review) But the Welsh towns did not elect the Liar mayor, or Prime Minister.
June 4, 2020
There was a humourous punchline at the end of each diary entry, but the remaining contents could not entice me to finish the remaining half of the book. I have always avoided Naples because of its reputation for crime and grime. Having, admittedly, only seen photos, I wondered why it was called La Bella Napoli; it always looked "Brutta" to me. Still, I am curious about it precisely because I've never been there and I've often wondered if Neapolitans are the same as my family on the other side of Southern Italy. For these reasons I was curious to read the book.
But there just isn't enough there. There are some gripping stories of peasant prostitution, starvation, and innocent citizens being shot by Nazis, but these are the exception. Most entries are dry, slow-moving accounts of the author's work.
But there just isn't enough there. There are some gripping stories of peasant prostitution, starvation, and innocent citizens being shot by Nazis, but these are the exception. Most entries are dry, slow-moving accounts of the author's work.
July 22, 2020
The invasion of Europe to fight back against the Nazi’s began in Sicily in July 1943. A couple of months after that the allies had reached halfway through Italy, Norman Lewis was one of those who landed in Paestum, Southern Italy in September 1943. Just before he disembarked from the Duchess of Bedford they were given a lecture by the intelligence corps who could have saved everyone a lot of time by just saying that they knew nothing about what was happening�
Passing the corpses of those that had died earlier that were laid out neatly was an eyeopener for him. He and eleven others had been issued with a Webley pistol with five rounds of ammunition and no orders on what to do or where to go. Sleeping overnight in a wood he woke and heard German voices nearby, they soon faded out and he went back to sleep. The battle arrived with a vengeance the following day though, sitting in a farmhouse they watched a line of American tanks pass and not long after that they were back, but fewer of them and then lots of people running around wearing gas masks and running around panicking. The battel was to rage until the end of the month, and then Lewis was admitted to hospital with malaria. This was just the beginning of what was to be one of the most surreal experiences of his life and he was finally to set foot in Naples in early October.
As he recovered from his illness he watched the newly liberated population as they lived their life outdoors in the late autumn. They hadn’t advertised that they were the headquarters for the secret police, but word soon got out and they were to have a steady stream of people with information to offer. They had scant information rather they were there primarily to declare loyalty to the new regime. The information that they did gather sent them on various wild goose chases and they came to realise that a lot of the information being provided was personal vendettas and grudges being played out on an official level.
It is still a dangerous place, bombs have been left as booby traps, and in the chaos that happens as one authority changes to another, there is space for the rise of the organised crime to fill the gaps once again. The culture of silence was almost suffocating, he would hear about a murder, see where the body had fallen and there was nothing left but a few drops of blood and a denial of anything happening by those in the vicinity.
This shattered city that had pretty much been bombed back to the middle ages, people were starving, crime and corruption were endemic. If it wasn’t nailed down it would go missing. Whilst he did what he could given the meagre resources that they had, he tried to be fair and just in his work. He came to realise that his refusal to accept the token bribes offered by the population counted against him in the end. And yet with all this, it was fairly peaceful, his weapon would remain unfired throughout his stay.
I liked the diary form as you can follow the ebb and flow of people and life as it happens to him during his year in the city. He witnesses the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, deals with the menial, trying to find who had been cutting cables down or stealing army blankets to vetting whether a resident can marry a British soldier or not, a life-changing decision for some people. This is an excellent account of post-war Naples though at times it can be heartbreaking to read.
Passing the corpses of those that had died earlier that were laid out neatly was an eyeopener for him. He and eleven others had been issued with a Webley pistol with five rounds of ammunition and no orders on what to do or where to go. Sleeping overnight in a wood he woke and heard German voices nearby, they soon faded out and he went back to sleep. The battle arrived with a vengeance the following day though, sitting in a farmhouse they watched a line of American tanks pass and not long after that they were back, but fewer of them and then lots of people running around wearing gas masks and running around panicking. The battel was to rage until the end of the month, and then Lewis was admitted to hospital with malaria. This was just the beginning of what was to be one of the most surreal experiences of his life and he was finally to set foot in Naples in early October.
As he recovered from his illness he watched the newly liberated population as they lived their life outdoors in the late autumn. They hadn’t advertised that they were the headquarters for the secret police, but word soon got out and they were to have a steady stream of people with information to offer. They had scant information rather they were there primarily to declare loyalty to the new regime. The information that they did gather sent them on various wild goose chases and they came to realise that a lot of the information being provided was personal vendettas and grudges being played out on an official level.
It is still a dangerous place, bombs have been left as booby traps, and in the chaos that happens as one authority changes to another, there is space for the rise of the organised crime to fill the gaps once again. The culture of silence was almost suffocating, he would hear about a murder, see where the body had fallen and there was nothing left but a few drops of blood and a denial of anything happening by those in the vicinity.
This shattered city that had pretty much been bombed back to the middle ages, people were starving, crime and corruption were endemic. If it wasn’t nailed down it would go missing. Whilst he did what he could given the meagre resources that they had, he tried to be fair and just in his work. He came to realise that his refusal to accept the token bribes offered by the population counted against him in the end. And yet with all this, it was fairly peaceful, his weapon would remain unfired throughout his stay.
I liked the diary form as you can follow the ebb and flow of people and life as it happens to him during his year in the city. He witnesses the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, deals with the menial, trying to find who had been cutting cables down or stealing army blankets to vetting whether a resident can marry a British soldier or not, a life-changing decision for some people. This is an excellent account of post-war Naples though at times it can be heartbreaking to read.
January 30, 2020
The Italian journalist Anna Maria Ortese, writing of Naples in the fifties, finds Naples little changed from the medieval-seeming region that Lewis was stationed in as an intelligence officer as the Allies began their invasion in 1943. By the end of his duty there he has come to love Italy despite the frustrations of his work, and to deplore the ignorant ham-handedness of the army’s initiatives. The incredible poverty and destruction of war are portrayed with no varnish. So are the interesting range of Italians that Lewis encounters. There is the Camorra, there are impoverished nobility, there are peasants living like slaves.
The question one comes away with is whether the Allied occupation made any difference in the long term situation in Naples, or whether Ortese would have found what she found in any case. One suspects life there adapted itself to the Allies, as it had to centuries of invaders before, and then more or less returned to its normal life.
I listened to the audio version. Well read.
The question one comes away with is whether the Allied occupation made any difference in the long term situation in Naples, or whether Ortese would have found what she found in any case. One suspects life there adapted itself to the Allies, as it had to centuries of invaders before, and then more or less returned to its normal life.
I listened to the audio version. Well read.
June 9, 2023
Naples '44: A World War II Diary of Occupied Italy is exactly that: a firsthand account of the British soldier Norman Lewis� experiences in war-torn Naples after the Allies had liberated Italy during World War II.
Lewis dives straight into his arrival in the city, foregoing a lengthy backstory and immersing the reader in the immediacy of his situation. I appreciated how despite all of the brutality of the war and surrounding violence going on around him, he always displayed a poet’s eye for the natural beauty and humanity that persisted amidst the chaos. These moments serve as a poignant reminder of the enduring spirit of humanity even in the most challenging circumstances.
The initial sections of the book are particularly intense, vividly portraying scenes of war that leave a lasting impression. From witnessing a tank that had been bombed and subsequently boiled its human occupants to the point of a puddle of fat dispersing underneath the tank, to finding the body of a dead German soldier on the couch of an Italian civilian who had poisoned him with wine, the reader is thrust into the visceral horrors of conflict. Lewis's ability to convey these harrowing experiences with vivid detail showcases his skill as a descriptive writer.
As the narrative progresses, Lewis delves into the effects of war on the civilian population of Naples. He portrays the desperation and hardships faced by ordinary people, with lines like “There is a persistent rumor of a decline in the cat population of the city� and we hear of many disturbing accounts of their troubles such as the reality of fathers offering their child daughters as prostitutes to the soldiers as a means of survival.
After the first half of the book however, the middle portion of the narrative begins to become monotonous and repetitive, as the author settles into his job investigating crime and theft. This shift in focus disrupts the initial narrative momentum and I found myself losing interest. The book became a sequence of thefts that began to feel redundant after some time, with seemingly only short breaks here and there. Thus, the narrative had no feeling of a climax towards the end, ending rather abruptly.
I do recognize the importance of a work like this, and I found a number of locations in Naples that I’d like to visit when I travel to the city later this year. I also found particularly interesting his reporting of the very serious religious belief in saints and miracles and their power to control the destiny of the city in the population at the time. However, when I finished the book, I didn’t have any sort of feeling like this book would leave any lasting impact on me whatsoever and I didn’t feel any desire to look up more about the author or to explore more of his work which I think says something. However, many others have rated this book very highly, so I wouldn't necessarily discourage people from checking this out!
Lewis dives straight into his arrival in the city, foregoing a lengthy backstory and immersing the reader in the immediacy of his situation. I appreciated how despite all of the brutality of the war and surrounding violence going on around him, he always displayed a poet’s eye for the natural beauty and humanity that persisted amidst the chaos. These moments serve as a poignant reminder of the enduring spirit of humanity even in the most challenging circumstances.
The initial sections of the book are particularly intense, vividly portraying scenes of war that leave a lasting impression. From witnessing a tank that had been bombed and subsequently boiled its human occupants to the point of a puddle of fat dispersing underneath the tank, to finding the body of a dead German soldier on the couch of an Italian civilian who had poisoned him with wine, the reader is thrust into the visceral horrors of conflict. Lewis's ability to convey these harrowing experiences with vivid detail showcases his skill as a descriptive writer.
As the narrative progresses, Lewis delves into the effects of war on the civilian population of Naples. He portrays the desperation and hardships faced by ordinary people, with lines like “There is a persistent rumor of a decline in the cat population of the city� and we hear of many disturbing accounts of their troubles such as the reality of fathers offering their child daughters as prostitutes to the soldiers as a means of survival.
After the first half of the book however, the middle portion of the narrative begins to become monotonous and repetitive, as the author settles into his job investigating crime and theft. This shift in focus disrupts the initial narrative momentum and I found myself losing interest. The book became a sequence of thefts that began to feel redundant after some time, with seemingly only short breaks here and there. Thus, the narrative had no feeling of a climax towards the end, ending rather abruptly.
I do recognize the importance of a work like this, and I found a number of locations in Naples that I’d like to visit when I travel to the city later this year. I also found particularly interesting his reporting of the very serious religious belief in saints and miracles and their power to control the destiny of the city in the population at the time. However, when I finished the book, I didn’t have any sort of feeling like this book would leave any lasting impact on me whatsoever and I didn’t feel any desire to look up more about the author or to explore more of his work which I think says something. However, many others have rated this book very highly, so I wouldn't necessarily discourage people from checking this out!
August 24, 2019
A British intelligence officer on loan to the American Fifth Army, Norman Lewis landed at Paestum with the Allies and soon found himself in Naples heading up the effort to root out collaborators--a thankless task that entailed sifting through masses of denunciations, most inspired by personal vendettas going back decades. Meanwhile, former Fascists and powerful crime bosses ingratiated themselves with the occupying forces and continued as before.
All of this serves as the background to Lewis's real story, which is the relationships he formed with the people of Naples and some of the surrounding towns. Married to a Sicilian, he spoke Italian and was sensitive to cultural nuances. He came away from his year living among the Italians "converted" to their way of living and loving:
All of this serves as the background to Lewis's real story, which is the relationships he formed with the people of Naples and some of the surrounding towns. Married to a Sicilian, he spoke Italian and was sensitive to cultural nuances. He came away from his year living among the Italians "converted" to their way of living and loving:
. . .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.Notwithstanding the appalling poverty and destruction he witnessed, Lewis saw the dignity and generosity of the Italians and seems to have carried the experience in his heart as he journeyed to other war-torn spots. He had a sharp eye for hypocrisy and called out injustice when he encountered it, but he never failed to see the decency in people. One comes away from his work with knowledge, sadness, and hope.
June 9, 2015
I read this book at the same time as Curzio Malaparte's The Skin. This review compares the two books and was posted on my blog at together with pictures and relevant links.
Curzio Malaparte’s The Skin and Norman Lewis’s Naples �44: An Intelligence Officer in the Italian Labyrinth both concern Naples under Allied occupation during World War Two, written by people who were there at the time. Malaparte was an Italian liaison officer, hanging out with American forces, an independently wealthy, highly cultured ex-fascist supporter of Mussolini (who after the war joined the communist party) with a cynical and somewhat deranged, fantastical view of life, fuelled perhaps by his traumatic experiences as a news reporter with German forces in Russia in the period preceding his switch of sides to the Allies.
Lewis was an immensely experienced travel writer by the time he recalled his experiences, some thirty years after they occurred, but also quite a hard nut, no doubt a necessary attitude if one was to survive in his role, able to recount the many horrors of Neapolitan life at that time in a relatively detached manner, until a procession of blind children are led into a restaurant where he is eating, begging for food. At this point his emotional defences break down and distress overwhelms him.
Both of them describe terrible things. Naples at that time had experienced the occupation of the Germans, against whom Neapolitans had violently rebelled once their defeat seemed imminent, only to suffer reprisals when the Germans staged a temporary return, an American and then a German bombing campaign in which many houses were destroyed and lives were lost. Most of the wealthy inhabitants, with the exception of a few eccentrically attached aristocrats beautifully described by Malaparte, had fled, leaving the poor behind. Poverty in Naples was already legendary in its proportions and war conditions pushed this to further extremes, so that those without ready access to food did almost anything to survive, including eating the limpets off rocks near the sea, prostituting themselves to soldiers, and on occasion selling their children to paedophilic members of the armed forces. At the same time, the battle for Monte Cassino raged as the Allies tried to fight their way through to Rome and there was a major eruption of nearby Vesuvius.
While Lewis presents his book as a memoir based on diary notes taken at the time, Malaparte calls his book a novel, and it is clear that parts of it are dreams or fantasies, mixed with a sorrowful bitterness that leads him to taunt the American ‘liberators� of his country, who he regards as hopelessly naïve. Malaparte frequently comes across as a thoroughly unpleasant character, describing older women, dwarves and homosexual men in terms that mock, reject and seek to humiliate. He is a know-all whose pride in his own literary accomplishments peppers the pages at intervals, as he name-drops his way through the greats of European literature and intellectual culture of the time. He attacks even the smallest hint of idealistic sentiment in his American hosts. He delights in informing them that, out of politeness, he felt obliged to eat a human hand that has found its way into the soup they have shared (he later reveals that the bones he arranged on the plate in the shape of a hand were animal bones). He enjoys the consternation of visiting American dignitaries when a manatee from the local aquarium, looking disturbingly like a dead girl, is served up for a dinner in their honour. He is a person who has decided that he is always right in perceiving things that others cannot see, and persistently and sadistically attempts to rub American noses in the dirt until they recognise his superior knowledge. In fact, though, the conversations in which he apparently achieves these victories over his interlocutors are distinctly ‘fictitious,� consisting of imagined ripostes. I have no doubt that in reality he was content to keep these thoughts relatively hidden, cementing his position in the American military regime as a ‘charming� and cultured tourist guide.
So, an unpleasant and somewhat dishonest book by a nasty man. Why would one want to read it? I admit to a certain voyeuristic fascination. Yet there is also a sense in which the book speaks some deeper truths. Malaparte is, for example, effective in muddying the clean boundaries between defeat and victory, conquerors and conquered, liberators and oppressors, which sustain military-political ideologies driving the destructive engines of war. And on this, Malaparte’s fantastical inversion of these binaries (like Foucault’s works on madness) can be very amusing as they strike home. For example, he describes ‘Negro� soldiers being bought and sold as ‘slaves� by the Neapolitans they had supposedly conquered, or liberated, depending on your viewpoint. Imagining that they were calling the shots, these soldiers were in fact regarded as a valuable commodity, providing access to the black market army stores essential for survival. Any family patronised by such a ‘customer� would benefit enormously from the cigarettes, chocolate, blankets, food and more that the soldier brought with him as payment for sexual services or other domestic comforts, such as a warm welcome and a well-cooked Italian meal. So the black American soldiers were referred from one family to another by entrepreneurial young boys, taking a commission for such introductions, thus, for Malaparte, ‘buying� the men as if slaves. A fantastical conceit perhaps, but one that gets to the perverse heart of relations between occupiers and the occupied.
Lewis, too, documents the operations of the black market in Naples, which assumed gargantuan proportions, presided over by Vito Genovese, a Mafia boss who the Americans, madly, had appointed to a key position of responsibility within their regime, with an estimated one-third of all military supplies finding their way into the hands of the civilian population, including, it was rumoured, a tank (stripped overnight for its parts) and a ship (disappeared one night from the harbour). That winter, the women of Naples appeared dressed in coats made of British army blankets.
Lewis’s job was more lowly than that of the aristocratic dandy Malaparte. From a lower middle class background in Enfield, from which he sought to distance himself before the war, learning Arabic and other languages as he travelled widely, Lewis joined the British Field Security Service as a sergeant. These men were responsible for intelligence work in occupied areas, listening to and investigating the many denunciations made by civilians, making arrests, screening local women who British soldiers said they wanted to marry, and generally seeking out wrongdoers. Lewis is not without his own brand of cynicism, but one senses that it is less energetic and aggressive than Malaparte’s, born more of world weariness, rather than active sentiment. His position involved him in witnessing and dealing with an endless train of human misery, in what he came to feel was a hopeless attempt to bring good governance to the everyday life of Neapolitans, something which they had never had anyway, could not see its purpose, and undermined at every opportunity.
Lewis, like Malaparte, has a sophisticated moral position, although it is one for which it is easier to feel sympathy. He notes the kindness and bravery of some Italians who helped British soldiers escaping from behind German lines by giving them shelter and dressing them as Italians, risking a terrible revenge should these efforts be discovered. Why then, asks Lewis, do the British punish Italians who help German soldiers escape back to their lines in the same way? Is it not kindness and fellow feeling for a human being that drives these actions? He regrets the heavy penalties meted out on low level black marketeers who are caught, while those higher up the command chain, including British and American officers, get away with it. He understands the forces that drive so many women to prostitute themselves and tries to exercise tolerance for this in screening them for marriage to British soldiers. In contrast to Malaparte, whose moments of compassion (for example, in insisting that a soldier dying from a stomach wound on the front line at Cassino not be moved unnecessarily) are tinged with self-righteousness (the soldier’s buddies beat him up for letting the man die, but the Army doctor, turning up late, predictably vindicates Malaparte’s judgement), Lewis appears to be is a more objective reporter of the scenes of suffering and moral distress that he witnessed.
A note of caution, though, needs to be raised at this point. An apparently objective style can be a false front. While Malaparte is quite evidently a fantasist, he is at least a self-acknowledged one, calling his work a ‘novel� rather than a memoir, and so obviously going off into dream sequences and imagined conversations to create a permanent reminder of his unreliability. Lewis wrote many books, one of which, Jackdaw Cake, is an autobiography. The accuracy of a series of bizarre characters and events from his early childhood in Camarthen, contained in Jackdaw Cake, has been questioned in a Spectator review by Byron Rogers, who grew up at the same time in that town. Rogers believes Lewis had ‘a weakness for embroidery� perhaps inherited from his Welsh roots:
“for in the old Wales each village had what the writer D. J. Williams called its own Transparent Liar, a man who reigned in pubs and farmhouse kitchens, the fun being derived from the fact that his audience knew, and he knew they knew, that he was lying.� (Rogers, 2008)
I don’t know what to make of this accusation and Lewis is not here to defend himself (or to ask if he can be bothered to defend himself). Yet I believe anyone wanting to learn more about this dreadful period in the history of Naples, or about the conditions of civilian populations devastated by war (and this is highly relevant today, as we witness the conflicts in Afghanistan, Syria Iraq, Sudan�) should read these books.
Curzio Malaparte’s The Skin and Norman Lewis’s Naples �44: An Intelligence Officer in the Italian Labyrinth both concern Naples under Allied occupation during World War Two, written by people who were there at the time. Malaparte was an Italian liaison officer, hanging out with American forces, an independently wealthy, highly cultured ex-fascist supporter of Mussolini (who after the war joined the communist party) with a cynical and somewhat deranged, fantastical view of life, fuelled perhaps by his traumatic experiences as a news reporter with German forces in Russia in the period preceding his switch of sides to the Allies.
Lewis was an immensely experienced travel writer by the time he recalled his experiences, some thirty years after they occurred, but also quite a hard nut, no doubt a necessary attitude if one was to survive in his role, able to recount the many horrors of Neapolitan life at that time in a relatively detached manner, until a procession of blind children are led into a restaurant where he is eating, begging for food. At this point his emotional defences break down and distress overwhelms him.
Both of them describe terrible things. Naples at that time had experienced the occupation of the Germans, against whom Neapolitans had violently rebelled once their defeat seemed imminent, only to suffer reprisals when the Germans staged a temporary return, an American and then a German bombing campaign in which many houses were destroyed and lives were lost. Most of the wealthy inhabitants, with the exception of a few eccentrically attached aristocrats beautifully described by Malaparte, had fled, leaving the poor behind. Poverty in Naples was already legendary in its proportions and war conditions pushed this to further extremes, so that those without ready access to food did almost anything to survive, including eating the limpets off rocks near the sea, prostituting themselves to soldiers, and on occasion selling their children to paedophilic members of the armed forces. At the same time, the battle for Monte Cassino raged as the Allies tried to fight their way through to Rome and there was a major eruption of nearby Vesuvius.
While Lewis presents his book as a memoir based on diary notes taken at the time, Malaparte calls his book a novel, and it is clear that parts of it are dreams or fantasies, mixed with a sorrowful bitterness that leads him to taunt the American ‘liberators� of his country, who he regards as hopelessly naïve. Malaparte frequently comes across as a thoroughly unpleasant character, describing older women, dwarves and homosexual men in terms that mock, reject and seek to humiliate. He is a know-all whose pride in his own literary accomplishments peppers the pages at intervals, as he name-drops his way through the greats of European literature and intellectual culture of the time. He attacks even the smallest hint of idealistic sentiment in his American hosts. He delights in informing them that, out of politeness, he felt obliged to eat a human hand that has found its way into the soup they have shared (he later reveals that the bones he arranged on the plate in the shape of a hand were animal bones). He enjoys the consternation of visiting American dignitaries when a manatee from the local aquarium, looking disturbingly like a dead girl, is served up for a dinner in their honour. He is a person who has decided that he is always right in perceiving things that others cannot see, and persistently and sadistically attempts to rub American noses in the dirt until they recognise his superior knowledge. In fact, though, the conversations in which he apparently achieves these victories over his interlocutors are distinctly ‘fictitious,� consisting of imagined ripostes. I have no doubt that in reality he was content to keep these thoughts relatively hidden, cementing his position in the American military regime as a ‘charming� and cultured tourist guide.
So, an unpleasant and somewhat dishonest book by a nasty man. Why would one want to read it? I admit to a certain voyeuristic fascination. Yet there is also a sense in which the book speaks some deeper truths. Malaparte is, for example, effective in muddying the clean boundaries between defeat and victory, conquerors and conquered, liberators and oppressors, which sustain military-political ideologies driving the destructive engines of war. And on this, Malaparte’s fantastical inversion of these binaries (like Foucault’s works on madness) can be very amusing as they strike home. For example, he describes ‘Negro� soldiers being bought and sold as ‘slaves� by the Neapolitans they had supposedly conquered, or liberated, depending on your viewpoint. Imagining that they were calling the shots, these soldiers were in fact regarded as a valuable commodity, providing access to the black market army stores essential for survival. Any family patronised by such a ‘customer� would benefit enormously from the cigarettes, chocolate, blankets, food and more that the soldier brought with him as payment for sexual services or other domestic comforts, such as a warm welcome and a well-cooked Italian meal. So the black American soldiers were referred from one family to another by entrepreneurial young boys, taking a commission for such introductions, thus, for Malaparte, ‘buying� the men as if slaves. A fantastical conceit perhaps, but one that gets to the perverse heart of relations between occupiers and the occupied.
Lewis, too, documents the operations of the black market in Naples, which assumed gargantuan proportions, presided over by Vito Genovese, a Mafia boss who the Americans, madly, had appointed to a key position of responsibility within their regime, with an estimated one-third of all military supplies finding their way into the hands of the civilian population, including, it was rumoured, a tank (stripped overnight for its parts) and a ship (disappeared one night from the harbour). That winter, the women of Naples appeared dressed in coats made of British army blankets.
Lewis’s job was more lowly than that of the aristocratic dandy Malaparte. From a lower middle class background in Enfield, from which he sought to distance himself before the war, learning Arabic and other languages as he travelled widely, Lewis joined the British Field Security Service as a sergeant. These men were responsible for intelligence work in occupied areas, listening to and investigating the many denunciations made by civilians, making arrests, screening local women who British soldiers said they wanted to marry, and generally seeking out wrongdoers. Lewis is not without his own brand of cynicism, but one senses that it is less energetic and aggressive than Malaparte’s, born more of world weariness, rather than active sentiment. His position involved him in witnessing and dealing with an endless train of human misery, in what he came to feel was a hopeless attempt to bring good governance to the everyday life of Neapolitans, something which they had never had anyway, could not see its purpose, and undermined at every opportunity.
Lewis, like Malaparte, has a sophisticated moral position, although it is one for which it is easier to feel sympathy. He notes the kindness and bravery of some Italians who helped British soldiers escaping from behind German lines by giving them shelter and dressing them as Italians, risking a terrible revenge should these efforts be discovered. Why then, asks Lewis, do the British punish Italians who help German soldiers escape back to their lines in the same way? Is it not kindness and fellow feeling for a human being that drives these actions? He regrets the heavy penalties meted out on low level black marketeers who are caught, while those higher up the command chain, including British and American officers, get away with it. He understands the forces that drive so many women to prostitute themselves and tries to exercise tolerance for this in screening them for marriage to British soldiers. In contrast to Malaparte, whose moments of compassion (for example, in insisting that a soldier dying from a stomach wound on the front line at Cassino not be moved unnecessarily) are tinged with self-righteousness (the soldier’s buddies beat him up for letting the man die, but the Army doctor, turning up late, predictably vindicates Malaparte’s judgement), Lewis appears to be is a more objective reporter of the scenes of suffering and moral distress that he witnessed.
A note of caution, though, needs to be raised at this point. An apparently objective style can be a false front. While Malaparte is quite evidently a fantasist, he is at least a self-acknowledged one, calling his work a ‘novel� rather than a memoir, and so obviously going off into dream sequences and imagined conversations to create a permanent reminder of his unreliability. Lewis wrote many books, one of which, Jackdaw Cake, is an autobiography. The accuracy of a series of bizarre characters and events from his early childhood in Camarthen, contained in Jackdaw Cake, has been questioned in a Spectator review by Byron Rogers, who grew up at the same time in that town. Rogers believes Lewis had ‘a weakness for embroidery� perhaps inherited from his Welsh roots:
“for in the old Wales each village had what the writer D. J. Williams called its own Transparent Liar, a man who reigned in pubs and farmhouse kitchens, the fun being derived from the fact that his audience knew, and he knew they knew, that he was lying.� (Rogers, 2008)
I don’t know what to make of this accusation and Lewis is not here to defend himself (or to ask if he can be bothered to defend himself). Yet I believe anyone wanting to learn more about this dreadful period in the history of Naples, or about the conditions of civilian populations devastated by war (and this is highly relevant today, as we witness the conflicts in Afghanistan, Syria Iraq, Sudan�) should read these books.
September 29, 2024
A well written diary account of Naples during WWII. Vary informative.
March 28, 2018
Questo libro è meraviglioso. È il diario di un soldato inglese (gallese, per la precisione) sbarcato con le truppe alleate, rimasto a Napoli per un anno col compito di svolgere indagini di vario tipo. È una denuncia degli orrori della guerra, di quello che la popolazione ha dovuto scontare: morti, povertà , la prostituzione per fame, gli stupri e la violenza. È anche una storia di amore immenso e viscerale per una città e per un mondo che abbaglia e spaventa, per il suo fascino esotico e triviale, raccontata con grande rispetto anche negli aspetti forse più incomprensibili a chi viene da fuori. Rispetto, amore: sono queste le prime parole che mi vengono in mente. Rispetto e amore nel raccontare le ferite che il nostro Meridione si è visto infliggere e si è autoinflitto; rispetto e amore per il senso magico della vita che i napoletani, i grandi orientali d'Italia, non hanno mai perso; rispetto e amore per una natura sconvolgente, spaventosa, crudele e benigna ad un tempo, la stessa cantata da Leopardi alle pendici del Vesuvio; rispetto e amore per un'umanità variegata, povera e dignitosa, sempre in piedi, maestra nell'arte di arrangiarsi. Uno sguardo da antropologo, mai giudicante ma sempre empatico. Lewis ha sofferto per le ingiustizie, per le brutture, per il dolore privo di senso, e io ho sofferto con lui. È non fiction, tutta realtà , ma davvero questo libro mi ha regalato le emozioni di un grande romanzo. Sarà che Napoli, la protagonista, è il più affascinante dei personaggi possibili.
March 14, 2022
Il giovane ufficiale inglese Norman Lewis ha scritto un diario per un anno quando era in Italia a Napoli nel 1944 (era sbarcato con le truppe alleate) e grazie a queste sue memorie ci regala e immortala la vita che si faceva in quel tempo ancora sotto la guerra. Da questa narrazione emerge la grande generosità dei napoletani che, pur non avendo quasi nulla, ti offrivano anche quel poco che avevano. Normann aveva la funzione di poliziotto e vigilava su qualunque cosa: così riesce a crearsi delle amicizie nel quartiere in cui lavorava, conosce personaggi particolari come il tizio che finge di essere lo zio di America nei funerali, per dare un prestigio a quel defunto (vedi, ha uno zio ricco e famoso!), scopre anche sfruttamenti, abusi (fatti anche da militari), scopre purtroppo la terribile schiavitù delle ragazze giovani costrette a prostituirsi per mangiare, le violenze, insomma, tutti gli orrori che qualunque guerra porta con sé.
November 8, 2013
I needed to cleanse my mind of all the mediocre and/or downright lousy fiction I'd been trying to read, so I settled on some tried and true nonfiction. Outstanding! This guy was such a great observer, and he had the temperament for keeping a detailed diary when history was being made.
February 23, 2024
Exceptional recordkeeping, though the form Lewis has chosen—a diary—precludes any dramatic arc. (Here I go again, judging nonfiction by fictional standards.) A pleasant, forgettable read.
July 20, 2019
Having just finished a factual account from World War II regarding the Italian Campaign it seemed a good choice to dig out this book that I have had for a couple of years.
I am so pleased I did. I had no pre-conceived ideas about this author or knowledge of his literary value.
I am not surprised to learn that he was a contemporary of Graham Greene having read and listened to his voice through the words recorded here.
Naples �44 is a diary set in the aftermath of the Allied liberation of Southern Italy. Lewis had a great affinity for Italy which enhances his account of the struggle of a people in abject poverty.
The author recounts the story, shares the facts as he understood them and like a modern day animal behaviourist, an Attenborough, commentates on the antics and realities of life on our planet.
This though isn’t a view of the Serengeti but a proud European nation and the city of Naples.
But in just everyday reflections, like sharing a personal conversation the author recounts and reveals the past. As fascinating as being with an archeologist in Egypt gently peaking back layers lost over time. Nuanced observation through events recorded in his diary, not by his own commentary or analysis, but a leisurely stroll and keen eye of life surviving, somehow around him. Above all where he needed lacked knowledge, providing clarity by allowing the people and their actions to speak for themselves.
A passage through time and space; like any great travel book, journal or documentary - without leaving your own chair.
A scratch and sniff book that arouses all your senses
.
Especially your sense of horror at the impact of war. Please note, by default, this must be similar to postwar life in Iraq, Afghanistan and The Sudan today.
There seems no victors in any war just casualties and enduring misery. There are spoils of war; black market racketeers and mainly Allied officers and their own command complicit to carry off all that can be contained in crates for safe homeward passage.
This isn’t the message of this book.
It is just a faithful record of an eye witness that is so powerful it evokes such passion in his readers.
I feel for these people, their poverty and marvel at their resilience and humanity.
I loved the journey this book takes you on. The clear and easy going sense of a story told by a firsthand observer. Using a rich language and with a clear love of a people and their history and heritage. I hung on his every word and enjoyed each page.
As stated some of the realities and lack of justice appalled me. It has left me more compassionate, less judgemental. I see dignity amid poverty, life where there is nothing but hunger, disease and death.
I think back to stories told to me by others visiting Southern Italy in the 70s and 80s bemoaning the lack of tourist facilities and the threat of crime and the constant fear on the street of robbery.
I understand now why rich people, perhaps with no language to share or appreciation of culture and shared history should not travel unprepared. They should not just tick off destinations. Etna, Pompeii and the Amalfi coast as seen.
Books like this would enhance anyone’s travel and perhaps, if we need such knowledge, to understand more than reading a guide book alone.
The publication by Eland of such lost literary treasures is a good one. But books are only as good as a read item. Mine lay unread for a couple of years.
I will research more now, before I travel, try to be less arrogant in my attitude and with any opinions on a country and its people. In this author I have found a writer I trust and want to read more of his work.
I am so pleased I did. I had no pre-conceived ideas about this author or knowledge of his literary value.
I am not surprised to learn that he was a contemporary of Graham Greene having read and listened to his voice through the words recorded here.
Naples �44 is a diary set in the aftermath of the Allied liberation of Southern Italy. Lewis had a great affinity for Italy which enhances his account of the struggle of a people in abject poverty.
The author recounts the story, shares the facts as he understood them and like a modern day animal behaviourist, an Attenborough, commentates on the antics and realities of life on our planet.
This though isn’t a view of the Serengeti but a proud European nation and the city of Naples.
But in just everyday reflections, like sharing a personal conversation the author recounts and reveals the past. As fascinating as being with an archeologist in Egypt gently peaking back layers lost over time. Nuanced observation through events recorded in his diary, not by his own commentary or analysis, but a leisurely stroll and keen eye of life surviving, somehow around him. Above all where he needed lacked knowledge, providing clarity by allowing the people and their actions to speak for themselves.
A passage through time and space; like any great travel book, journal or documentary - without leaving your own chair.
A scratch and sniff book that arouses all your senses
.
Especially your sense of horror at the impact of war. Please note, by default, this must be similar to postwar life in Iraq, Afghanistan and The Sudan today.
There seems no victors in any war just casualties and enduring misery. There are spoils of war; black market racketeers and mainly Allied officers and their own command complicit to carry off all that can be contained in crates for safe homeward passage.
This isn’t the message of this book.
It is just a faithful record of an eye witness that is so powerful it evokes such passion in his readers.
I feel for these people, their poverty and marvel at their resilience and humanity.
I loved the journey this book takes you on. The clear and easy going sense of a story told by a firsthand observer. Using a rich language and with a clear love of a people and their history and heritage. I hung on his every word and enjoyed each page.
As stated some of the realities and lack of justice appalled me. It has left me more compassionate, less judgemental. I see dignity amid poverty, life where there is nothing but hunger, disease and death.
I think back to stories told to me by others visiting Southern Italy in the 70s and 80s bemoaning the lack of tourist facilities and the threat of crime and the constant fear on the street of robbery.
I understand now why rich people, perhaps with no language to share or appreciation of culture and shared history should not travel unprepared. They should not just tick off destinations. Etna, Pompeii and the Amalfi coast as seen.
Books like this would enhance anyone’s travel and perhaps, if we need such knowledge, to understand more than reading a guide book alone.
The publication by Eland of such lost literary treasures is a good one. But books are only as good as a read item. Mine lay unread for a couple of years.
I will research more now, before I travel, try to be less arrogant in my attitude and with any opinions on a country and its people. In this author I have found a writer I trust and want to read more of his work.
September 10, 2009
A classic; I'm surprised it took me so long to get around to reading it. Norman Lewis writes like an angel, and describes the medieval squalor and suffering of Naples in 1944 with a strange, detached irony that belies the horrors and injustices he describes. At the same time, he manages to develop a genuine affection and respect for the venal, superstitious, and devious Neapolitans. This world, and Lewis's calm curiosity about it, seems very remote from ours:
[We:]... were admiring the splendid husk of the Temple of Neptune when the war came to us in the shape of a single attacking plane. Hearing its approach, we crouched under a lintel. The plane swooped, opened up with its machine guns, and then passed on to drop a single bomb on the beach before heading off northwards. One of my friends felt a light tap on a pack he was wearing, caused by a spent machine gun bullet which fell harmlessly to the ground. The experience was on the whole an exhilarating one. We appreciated the contrasts involved and no one experienced alarm.
May 9, 2009
Gritty. I read this book in the two days that I visited Naples and it helped to understand why the city is so rough. It is not a beautiful place and a lot of that is easily understood when you read about how much the city went through during the war.
This was a good read but I'm not sure I would recommend it if you are not traveling to Naples. Unless you like short books that personify war, in which case I do recommend this one or better yet, by Kurt Vonnegut.
This was a good read but I'm not sure I would recommend it if you are not traveling to Naples. Unless you like short books that personify war, in which case I do recommend this one or better yet, by Kurt Vonnegut.
July 8, 2010
Worthy of six stars.
July 12, 2019
I knew I would like this book - it came highly recommended by Francis Rolt - but it exceeded expectations. Time to find more Norman Lewis.
Kept thinking about South Africa as I read this - the chaos, the corruption, the deals made between government and private sector at the expense of Joe Average. Nothing changes - war time, peace time, greed and power are at the forefront.
Kept thinking about South Africa as I read this - the chaos, the corruption, the deals made between government and private sector at the expense of Joe Average. Nothing changes - war time, peace time, greed and power are at the forefront.
May 26, 2023
Norman Lewis had already made a name for himself as a travel writer of a distinctive and perceptive character by the time he published his account of a year in and around Naples with the Allied army of occupation in 1943-44. Written in diary form (it’s unclear how much, if at all, original journal entries have been rewritten with the benefit of hindsight), the clear eye for individual and organisational foibles, the almost photographic pen portraits of the many larger-than-life characters he encounters and the boundless sympathy for the human condition that characterises his travel books is all in evidence here. Despite himself, Lewis finds more to admire among the poverty-stricken, superstitious and Camorra-riven Neapolitans than many of the Allied forces: ‘a year among the Italians had converted me to such an admiration for their humanity and culture 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�.
March 15, 2024
It surprised me that such corruption, brutality, rape, torture, destruction, prostitution, hunger, and belief in miracles happened in Naples. People should know this history before traveling there. The perspective of the author was unique. He seemed like a good guy and his stories left me more interested than disgusted. I wonder if Naples� government is still run by mafia-types. It seems it would be a hard system to change.
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