THE SKIN (344 pp.)Curzio Mala-parteHoughton Mifflin ($3.50).
"Our true country," declares Curzio Malaparte in his new book, "is our own skin." By this definition, Signor Malaparte is a redoubtable patriot.
Before 1943, he was the Duce's tame intellectual, a pet journalist of Fascism, who, as special correspondent for Milan's Corriere delta Sera, was fed rich scoops of news on the silver spoon of favoritism. When the war began to turn against the Axis, so did Malaparte's pen. He was punished with brief confinement in a Rome prison, then allowed to retire to a Capri villa; there he was liberated by the Allied...