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During the summer of 1941, the Italian journalist and novelist Curzio Malaparte was the only front-line war correspondent in the whole of Russia. His account of events there is not unique for this reason alone: his astonishing eye for detail and intimate knowledge of the country lends his record a depth of understanding rarely found in other war reporting, and his attention to the human dimension of the conflict reveals him as a man of great humanity and compassion.
Expelled from the southern war zone on the orders of Goebbels in Septemher 1941, Malaparte spent four months under house arrest before being sent to cover events in Finland. From here he reported the Siege of Leningrad - one of the seminal events played out on the Eastern Front.
