"An Aspects of History Best Book of the Year; An Engelsberg Ideas Best Book of the Year
‘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."
"Schokolade verführt seit Jahrhunderten Kinder wie Erwachsene. Sie ist aber auch Anlaß leidenschaftlicher Unterhaltungen. Seelentröster? Dickmacher? Zartbitter oder Vollmilch? Fest oder flüssig? Auch die Autoren dieser amüsanten Anthologie konnten der zartesten Versuchung seit... nicht widerstehen. Lassen Sie sich in die sinnliche Welt der Speise der Götter entführen. Achten Sie bitte darauf, dass Ihre Lieblingsschokolade griffbereit liegt..."
"A Spectator Book of the Year 2020
A Times and Sunday Times Best Book of 2020
A Mail on Sunday Book of the Year 2020
‘Inspired … Lowe’s sensitive, disturbing book should be compulsory reading for both statue builders and statue topplers’ MAX HASTINGS, SUNDAY TIMES
What happens when our values change, but what we have set in stone does not?
Humankind has always had the urge to memorialise, to make physical testaments to the past. There’s just one problem: when we carve a statue or put up a monument, it can wind up holding us hostage to bad history.
In this extraordinary history book, Keith Lowe uses monuments from around the world to show how different countries have attempted to sculpt their history in the wake of the Second World War, and what these memorials reveal about their politics and national identity today.
Amongst many questions, the book asks: What does Germany signal to today’s far right by choosing not to disclose the exact resting place of Hitler? How can a bronze statue of a young girl in Seoul cause mass controversy? What is Russia trying to prove and hide, still building victory monuments at a prolific rate for a war now seventy years over?
As many around the world are questioning who and what we memorialise, Prisoners of History challenges our idea of national memory, history, and the enormous power of symbols in society today."
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