Malaparte: A Biography

In this bloated debut biography, diplomat Serra covers in granular detail the complicated life of Italian journalist and novelist Curzio Malaparte (1898–1957). Serra describes how during WWI, Malaparte fought as part of a French volunteer legion despite his father’s German ancestry. He joined the Italian National Fascist Party in the 1920s and laid the groundwork for Italy’s 1940 invasion of Greece by writing dubious newspaper dispatches on anti-Italian sentiments in the country. After WWII, Malaparte wrote his first novel, Kaputt, about the horrors he witnessed reporting from the Eastern Front during that conflict. Ever the chameleon, he built on his experiences as a war photographer by branching out into film, directing the 1951 drama The Forbidden Christ. He also sustained a late-in-life flirtation with communism, spending his final years before dying of cancer traveling to Moscow and China. Serra’s attempts to grapple with Malaparte’s confusing political ideology never quite make sense of its many contradictions and often come across as unpersuasive defenses. For example, Serra downplays Malaparte’s fascist and Maoist sympathies by implausibly insisting he “breathed the air of totalitarian ideologies without becoming infected.” It’s a tedious portrait that too often excuses its subject’s flaws instead of confronting them. (Feb.)