An Aspects of History Best Book of the Year; An Engelsberg Ideas Best Book of the Year
Shortlisted for the HWA Non-fiction Crown Award
‘A rigorous, myth-busting look at the city’s chaotic recovery in the wake of war and fascism’ FINANCIAL TIMES
This is the first major history of wartime Naples to appear in the English language. It fills a glaring gap in the British and American historiography of the war and shares a hoard of new stories – some of them truly shocking – that have never yet been published in any language.
When the Allies arrived in late 1943, Naples had already suffered a brutal German occupation and suffered reprisals from the city’s heroic resistance and uprisings. This did not save it from the merciless Allied bombing. The city was on its knees with widespread suffering and squalor. Criminal gangs prospered, as did typhus, starvation and soaring prices on the black market. Much of the female population was forced into part-time prostitution simply to obtain food. Then Vesuvius erupted.
Lowe’s gripping and powerful book places Naples right at the heart of Italian history. What happened in this city was not a mere sideshow to bigger events taking place further north, it was central to the story of the country as a whole. Neapolitans resisted Fascism just as the Florentines, the Bolognese, and the Milanese did. They suffered just as northerners did, and they longed as much for constitutional rebirth. The heroism and sacrifice that took place in Naples were harbingers of what would later happen throughout Italy – as were the compromise and corruption of ideals that came after the Allies took control.
Naples 1944 is original and humane history at its very best, and a book which shows that Neapolitan story is the Italian story.
About the Author :
Keith Lowe is the bestselling author of several major works of history. His first book, Inferno, was a critically acclaimed study of the bombing of Hamburg in 1943. His second book, Savage Continent, became a Sunday Times top ten bestseller, and went on to win both the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History and Italy’s national Cherasco History Prize. The Fear and the Freedom was shortlisted for the Historical Writers’ Association Non-fiction Crown. He has also written books on WWII monuments, and the bombing of Hamburg in 1943. Lowe has written for a variety of newspapers and journals, including the Daily Telegraph, The Times, the Wall Street Journal, El Paìs and the NeueZürcherZeitung. He serves on the historical advisory board for Liberation Route Europe, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He lives in London with his wife and two children.
Review :
Praise for Keith Lowe
‘Grimly absorbing, conveys the pity of war and its sorry aftermath with integrity and proper sympathy’ Ian Thompson, Sunday Telegraph
‘Moving, measured and provocative’ Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times
Graphic and chilling. This excellent book paints a little-known and frightening picture of a continent in the embrace of lawlessness and chaos’ Ian Kershaw
‘A powerful and disturbing book, painstakingly researched and written with both authority and an impressive historical sweep’ James Holland
‘An excellent account…Lowe's vivid descriptions of Europeans scrambling for scraps of food, rampant theft and 'destruction of morals' are a timely reminder that a certain humility is in order when we look at less fortunate continents today’ Brendan Simms, The Independent
