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anti_formalist12's review against another edition
challenging
dark
funny
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
masyessam's review against another edition
4.0
Best part of this book is looking up the name of each newly introduced socialite to see how long they survived the Great Purge.
quinndm's review against another edition
4.0
All of Malaparte’s books have a poetic beauty. His descriptions swim with life and, sometimes, those waters overpower you and it feels like you’ll be dragged away by that current, but the waves always return you to a safe shore; where you are happy to see the land after the ocean you just crossed. This is one of his shortest books, and it definitely feels like a narativised essay, but it still has all his wonder and insight.
screen_memory's review against another edition
5.0
I am often sympathetic to those who find themselves on the wrong side of history. Political affiliation means so extraordinarily little to me. My allegiance belongs neither to politics nor to ideology, but to literature above all. I identify not with the mob in their outrage and calls for erasure or censorship, but with Malaparte the ex-fascist, with Hamsun the apologetic advocate of Hitler, and with Ernst Junger and Yukio Mishima despite their nationalism. Renunciation or otherwise is of far less importance to me than to perhaps most others. Again, I am loyal to the republic of letters above all.
Malaparte has become a recent favorite of mine since reading his Kaputt last November, and The Skin a few months ago. His approach to writing could be described as historical, but his style, often bordering on the surreal or the farcical (an obvious influence on Kundera; there are undeniable echoes, for example, of Malaparte in the scenes involving Stalin in Kundera's Festival of Insignificance), renders fact and fiction indistinguishable.
One of so many brilliants writers born from the second world war, Malaparte troubles himself with the failures of fascism and communism with a formidable sense of humor - "You'll learn to perform miracles," a Soviet policeman says while arresting a doctor found guilty of performing a lifesaving operation.
The Kremlin Ball is the much lighter thematic work compared to Kaputt and The Skin which are quite heavy-handed, although given Malaparte's comic treatment, in the bleakness and devastation left in the wake of the war. The Kremlin Ball was born out of an outtake of The Skin, but is a work all its own, dealing primarily with the Soviet Union around the time of Stalin's Five-Year Plan, and detailing his view of the *ancien regime* of Communist society; the new aristocracy interested not in classlessness but luxuries of European import.
Malaparte writes: " “I came to Moscow convinced that it was an anti-Europe, or even just an alternative Europe, but had the painful realization that the whole Soviet nobility nurtured for Europe . . . an unconditional admiration.”
Malaparte has become a recent favorite of mine since reading his Kaputt last November, and The Skin a few months ago. His approach to writing could be described as historical, but his style, often bordering on the surreal or the farcical (an obvious influence on Kundera; there are undeniable echoes, for example, of Malaparte in the scenes involving Stalin in Kundera's Festival of Insignificance), renders fact and fiction indistinguishable.
One of so many brilliants writers born from the second world war, Malaparte troubles himself with the failures of fascism and communism with a formidable sense of humor - "You'll learn to perform miracles," a Soviet policeman says while arresting a doctor found guilty of performing a lifesaving operation.
The Kremlin Ball is the much lighter thematic work compared to Kaputt and The Skin which are quite heavy-handed, although given Malaparte's comic treatment, in the bleakness and devastation left in the wake of the war. The Kremlin Ball was born out of an outtake of The Skin, but is a work all its own, dealing primarily with the Soviet Union around the time of Stalin's Five-Year Plan, and detailing his view of the *ancien regime* of Communist society; the new aristocracy interested not in classlessness but luxuries of European import.
Malaparte writes: " “I came to Moscow convinced that it was an anti-Europe, or even just an alternative Europe, but had the painful realization that the whole Soviet nobility nurtured for Europe . . . an unconditional admiration.”
ungezieferwerden's review against another edition
2.0
malaparte in his proustian mode of verfabula sees a figure more like de charlus than marcel take the reigns. the narrator’s piggish pursuit of self recognition and privileged access to himself in the other sees a growing disillusionment not with whatever facts of the revolution after lenin there are but with himself. there is no christian miracle of radical transform complete with a losslessly conserved ego for the narrator to be found in soviet russia or anywhere but he’s far from alone in that.
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