Kaputt (New York Review Books Classics)

Curzio Malaparte spent most of World War II as an Italian consul to other fascist states: Germany, Romania, Finland. His novelistic account of the war, surreptitiously written, presents the conflict from the point of view of those doomed to lose it. Malaparte's account is marked by sharp, lyrical observations, as when he encounters a detachment of German soldiers fleeing a Ukrainian battlefield: "When Germans become afraid, when that mysterious German fear begins to creep into their bones, they always arouse a special horror and pity. Their appearance is miserable, their cruelty sad, their courage silent and hopeless." Bleak and hopeless indeed, Malaparte's is a remarkable testimonial.