I got bogged down in Malaparte's The Skin, but found this much more 'enjoyable'. It's posthumous, and probably not in an ideal form, but the idea of writing about the Soviets as if they were Proustian aristocrats was fabulous, and the whole thing is suitably hilarious and horrifying. ( )

This is in many ways, a story of chairs and miracles. That could strike some as odd, but given a focus on the new Moscow of the 1930s, maybe it isn’t. Malaparte was a journalist and diploma, one who served many masters. Always avoiding the lethal gaffe--he was imprisoned a number of times but still was able to press the flesh with his manicured hand dazzle and charm. Thus he was able to gossip with the inner circles of many a wartime regime.

The Kremlin Ball was published posthumously and it shows. I needed the snobbery of Soviet elite, the contradictions and the parvenus. Greta Garbo was not far off at all about materialistic dreams behind the Great Terror. Ninotschka could be considered an epilogue to the Kremlin Ball.

The episode relating to Mayakovsky appears inchoate. Malaparte may have merely lacked the time to embellish adequately the scene with his self aggrandizement. That’s a shame regardless of history’s shadow.

This is worth reading for who stare agape as Ivanka Trump is being positioned to serve on the World Bank. ( )