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.
