Naples '44

Norman Lewis arrives in war-torn Naples as an intelligence officer in 1944. The starving population has devoured all the tropical fish in the aquarium, respectable women have been driven to prostitution and the black market is king. Lewis finds little to admire in his fellow soldiers, but gains sustenance from the extraordinary vivacity of the Italians. There is the lawyer who earns his living bringing a touch of Roman class to funerals, the gynaecologist who "specializes in the restoration of lost virginity" and the widowed housewife who times her British lover against the clock. "Were I given the chance to be born again," writes Lewis, "Italy would be the country of my choice."

Norman Lewis is Britain's greatest living travel writer, with a list of some 10 travel books and several books of collected journalism to his name. However Lewis regards his greatest achievement to have been the reaction to his article Genocide in Brazil, published in The Sunday Times in 1968. It led to a change in Brazilian law relating to the treatment of the Indians and to the formation of Survival International which fights for the survival of indigenous peoples everywhere.

"Norman Lewis is one of the greatest of twentieth century British writers and Naples '44 is his masterpiece" Will Self