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Bezig met laden... Napels '44 (1978)door Norman Lewis
  
Bezig met laden...
 Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek.  emed0s | Sep 30, 2023 |   1  Natt90 | Feb 23, 2023 | Yet I’m quite sure that there are times when Lewis was exaggerating or inventing in the interests of greater drama. Were there villages around Naples—“medieval” places where the inhabitants had “Neolithic faces”—where women were still forced to submit to droit de seigneur, as the author claims? Well, no: droit de seigneur is a myth with no basis in historical fact. And while Lewis does at times express empathy towards the women and girls who were sexually assaulted or forced into sex work because of the war, there’s an “oh she was lying about it being rape” story and at least one moment when he says that peasant women are just used to rape, which is such absolute bullshit. I never warmed to Lewis as a result, and while this had interest for me as a historical piece, it didn’t grab me in the way it seems to have done for others. (  )1 siriaeve | Apr 12, 2022 | wbell539 | Dec 22, 2021 |  ) untraveller | May 8, 2021 |
 “Naples is extraordinary in every way,” says Lewis. It has always been a theater, and in 1944 it combined Grand Guignol with Fellini (we hear of “the famous midget gynaecologist Professore Dottore Salerno”). Its thieves and black-marketeers exhibited an audacity perhaps unequaled until Vietnam... Lewis dwells also on the starvation, the quasi-medieval religious credulity, the epidemics, the madness and deformities, the fraud and bribery and flagrant injustice, the syphilis and child prostitution, the open banditry, the wholesale rape, and the cruelty. A boys’ pastime was to ignite gasoline-soaked rags tied to bats and release them prettily into the night sky; a grave adult Neapolitan “was full of praise for the ingenuity with which they made their own small pleasures.” On 19 March 1944 Vesuvius erupted, "the most majestic and terrible sight I have ever seen, or ever expect to see", Lewis wrote. Overhead rose a cloud in the form of Pliny's famous pine-tree, apparently quite solid. While steadily growing larger, it remained entirely immobile. That still shape, hanging above the city, was full of menace. Recently, when I was writing my book Vesuvius: The Most Famous Volcano in the World (Profile, £15.99), I reread Naples '44. Of perhaps a dozen resounding accounts of the volcano as it erupted down the centuries, no one has bettered Lewis's description... Early-21st-century leaders are frequently seduced by credible tribal warlords; their mid-20th-century counterparts seemed unable (or unwilling) to tell a gangster king from a social democrat. For all that, Lewis wrote about the values, ingenuity and extraordinary spirit in many of the individuals he encountered. Tragically, behind them the stage for modern Italy was being set on shifting moral sands guided by little more than ignorance, naivety and astonishing misjudgement. Lewis, a figure in the shadows, was the most profound witness to that process.
The basis for the powerful documentary narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch, Lewis's memoir of the Italian city after Nazi occupation is a "masterpiece" (Will Self). "Vivid, lucid, elegant, often funny," Naples '44 is the starkly human account of the true cost of war as seen through the eyes of a young, untested man who would never again look at his world the same way (The New York Times Book Review). With his gift for linguistics, Norman Lewis was assigned to the British Intelligence Corps' Field Security Service, tasked with reforming civil services, dealing with local leaders, and keeping the peace in places World War II had devastated. After a near-disastrous Allied landing at Salerno, Italy, Lewis was stationed in the newly liberated city of Naples. But bringing the city back to life was unlike anything he had been prepared for. Much of the populace was far from grateful, stealing anything they could, not only from each other but also from those sent to help them. Local vendettas and endless feuds made discerning friend from Nazi collaborator practically impossible, and turned attempts at meting out justice into a farce. And as the deprivations grew ever harsher, a proud and vibrant people were forced to survive on a diet of prostitution, corruption, and a desperate belief in miracles, cures, and saviors. But even through the darkness and chaos, Lewis evokes the essential dignity of the Neapolitan people, their traditions of civility, courage, and generosity of spirit, and the indefatigable pride that kept them fighting for life during the greatest calamity in human history. Praised by Graham Greene as "one of the best writers . . . of our century," Norman Lewis presents a portrait of Naples that is a "lyrical, ironic and detached account of the tempestuous, byzantine and opaque city in the aftermath of war" (Will Self). His Naples '44 "reads like prose . . . sings like poetry" (The Plain Dealer). Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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 Google Books — Bezig met laden...GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)940.53History and Geography Europe Europe 1918- World War IILC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde: (4.01)
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And in this case, saying a Brit is pretty much saying a protestant-values-infused northern European who is also a realist and adapts to the daily work with the Mediterranean spirit, that crazy half catholic, half moor, and half rundown-aristocratic blend that produces people seemingly pre-prepared for the hardships of wartimes but at the same time makes building any semblance of a society ruled by law&order extremely hard.
Again, the author is brilliant at writing the vignettes (orphan kids fighting for survival, the various approaches to sex for pay, the rarity of a good meal, ...) paint that quaint society pushed to the limits of survival, and how the efforts to police it could only go so far. (