Naples 1944

War, Liberation and Chaos

Keith Lowe

$39.99

Paperback

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English

HARPER360
01 January 2025

History; European history; Second World War

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.

By: Keith Lowe
Imprint: HARPER360
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 153mm, Spine: 36mm
Weight: 480g
ISBN: 9780008339609
ISBN 10: 0008339600
Pages: 400
Publication Date: 01 January 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Keith Lowe was born in 1970 and studied English Literature at Manchester University. After twelve years as a history publisher, he embarked on a full-time career as a writer and historian, and is now recognised on both sides of the Atlantic as an authority on the Second World War and its aftermath. He is the author of Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg 1943, and Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II, which won the 2013 PEN/Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History. In 2017 he published The Fear and the Freedom, to great acclaim. His books have been translated into twenty languages.

Reviews for Naples 1944: War, Liberation and Chaos

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 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