Mister Gray walks through the spring alleys Naples. He puts the violent scenes of Gomorrah, Sabiano’s books and the TV series out of his mind. He walks through the little shops on Via Benedetto Croce and looks for the traditional music of the city, which was so well thought out by the wonderful Cristina Plujar.

Under the white and blue flags of the city’s team, he climbs the stinking alleys of the so-called Spanish Quarter over Via Toledo. His thoughts are now running elsewhere. “Those were the days of the ‘plague’ in Naples.” The famous opening sentence of “Skin” by a great man. a piece of Malaparte.

This orgiastic, mystical, deadly naked city by the sea, under a rising volcano.

Naples, 1943 The Americans liberate the impoverished, hungry, disorderly city. Routes through labyrinthine streets, along the sotics of a city, or along the outskirts of the Mediterranean Sea take on an otherworldly grotesque character in Malaparte’s unique storytelling, which, like his other masterpiece, Kapou, is present in what he describes. But most of them are a wise union of the real with phantasmagoria and nightmare.

Mr. Gray first discovered the “Skin” in the translation of the unforgettable Anatios Chrysostomidis in Temelio’s publications. A little later, he came across (previously, 1981) a shocking adaptation of Liliana Cavani with Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale and Burt Lancaster in the lead roles. He will reread this unimaginable novel in a new translation by Panagiotis Skondras for the Metaihmio publishing house.

In a very strange way, Naples Malaparta left faint traces in different parts of the city: this orgiastic, mystical, cruel to death city by the sea, under the awakening volcano, the circus of the living dead, fish that look like little children served fried; boys who are “sold” by their mothers to castrated Moroccan soldiers; on the only virgin left in the city, exposed by her father; on disembowelled American soldiers dying slowly, as if hypnotized; and wild merry orgies culminating in huge cauldrons. boiling pasta and the “birth” of a stuffed phallus by a “ready-born” young man – never before has this explosive mixture of life and death been captured so vividly in a novel. Malaparte after the fire of Vesuvius is extinguished: “The God of Naples, the totem of the Neapolitan people, has died. A huge black crepe landed on the city, on the bay, on the hill of Posilipos. People walked barefoot through the streets, talking in an undertone, as if there was a dead person in every house.