Four Days of Naples
About this audiobook
In September 1943, Naples lay devastated by incessant bombardment from Allied planes. The city, under an iron occupation by the Germans, was without food. During the bombardment, the famed scugnizzi, the street boys of Naples, grew increasingly exasperated by the passiveness of their elders. Known for their daring, verve, and enterprise, the boys staged an incredible revolt against the Germans on September 28, 1943. Dragging furniture into the roadways, they built barricades and shot at the enemy with stolen guns, inspiring many adults and Italian army deserters to join their ranks. Three days and hundreds of deaths later, the Germans left the city for good.
Author Aubrey Menen, who heard the story of those historic four days from the scugnizzi themselves in 1948, here recreates the battle street by street, house by house.
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About the author
Aubrey Menen was born Salvatore Aubrey Clarence Menen in 1912 in London. After attending University College in London, he held a variety of jobs until World War II began, when he organized pro-Allied radio broadcasts in India. After the war, he returned to London to work in advertising, but the success of his first novel, The Prevalence of Witches, encouraged him to write full-time. He wrote several novels exploring the nature of nationalism and the cultural contrast between his Irish-Indian ancestry and his British upbringing. Menen died in Trivandrum, Kerala, India, in 1989.
Wanda McCaddon began recording books for the fledgling audiobook industry in the early 1980s and has since narrated well over six hundred titles for major audio publishers, as well as abridging, narrating, and coproducing classic titles for her own company, Big Ben. Audiobook listeners may be familiar with her voice under one of her two "nom de mikes," Donada Peters and Nadia May. The recipient of an Audie Award and more than twenty-five Earphones Awards, AudioFile magazine has named her one of recording's Golden Voices. Wanda also appears regularly on the professional stage in the San Francisco Bay Area.
