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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.