Selection: Michalis Katsigeras

CURZIO MALAPARTE: Rome, 19 – The writer Curzio Malaparte died of lung cancer this afternoon at a clinic in Rome, where he had been admitted in March after returning from a trip to China. Malaparte was born in Prato, Florence, on June 9, 1898, and took part as a volunteer in the First World War. He served in the Garibaldi Legion and fought in the battle of the Ardennes. He was injured and awarded the military medal. In 1925 he took the helm of the Turin daily newspaper La Stampa and then the weekly newspapers L’Italia Letteraria, and Conquista Dello Stato, as well as many other Italian and foreign reviews. In the Second World War he was a war correspondent on several fronts. In 1941 he settled in France where he stayed until 1947, when he returned to Italy to work on the weekly magazine Il Tempo. His main works are: “Woman Like Me” (1940), “The Volga Rises in Europe” (1943), “Kaputt” (1944), “The Skin” (1949) and “Those Cursed Tuscans” (1956). (Ed. note: Malaparte [Kurt Erich Suckert] came to Greece on the eve of October 20, 1940 and wrote a number of reports that were published on his return to Italy a few days after the Italian attack on Greece. He revisited Greece in the 1950s as a guest of the Festival of Athens.)