California Italian Studies

This article reconsiders Curzio Malaparte’s polemical novel La pelle [1949], which either has been condemned as a false historical account of post-Liberation Naples or defended as true “art.” Focusing on La pelle’s representations of translation between the Allies and the Italians, I draw on contemporary translation theory to analyze how the text constructs these claims of “fidelity,” and to ask why they require the bodies of marginalized figures (the soldato negro, the Moroccan goumier and the “virgin”). While La pelle “erases” these bodies, converting them into metaphors for art and war, my reading insists on their metaphorical and literal significance.