This opening scene of this novel about the American liberation of Naples in WW2 stunned and excited me, but I abandoned it on page 30 after suffering through 5 or so pages of what was perhaps intended to be a comic scene of crafty Neapolitans buying and selling black American soldiers like slaves, and then another 2 or 3 pages intent on describing how physically repulsive the female dwarfs residing on a certain street are. I'm out.