Curzio Malaparte (Malaparte is the antonym of Bonaparte, lit. “evil lot”) is the pseudonym of the Italian writer and journalist Kurt Erich Zuckert (1989–1957), an inconvenient classic of Italian literature of the last century. “Skin” continues the description of the horrors of World War II, begun in the novel “Kaput” (1944). If in the first part of this peculiar dilogy we were talking about the Eastern Front, here the action takes place at the very end of the war in Naples, and the place of the advancing Wehrmacht units was taken by American paratroopers. The novel was first published in Paris in 1949 in French; after the Italian edition (1950), the author was accused of anti-patriotism and immorality, and “Skin” was included by the Vatican in the index of banned books. After the film adaptation of the novel by Liliana Cavani in 1981 (Malaparte was played by Marcello Mastroianni), the author began to regain worldwide popularity. You are holding in your hands the first complete Russian edition of one of the forgotten masterpieces of the 20th century.