He wore masks and made things up, so those closest to him punned with one of his titles to come up with the nickname Mister Chameleon. But at the age of 15, he was fighting alongside French troops against Germany. And at 40, as a war correspondent on the Russian front, he wrote 'Kaputt', one of the most hallucinating novels ever written about Nazi horrors, like a big brother in barbarianism to the current bestseller Les Bienveillantes.
He went from Socialism to Fascism before turning into one of the fiercest opponents to Mussolini, who relegated him to Lipari, and converting, rather the late in the day, to Maoism. But we owe him one of the most implacable books ever written against dictatorship, Coup d’Etat - the technique or Revolution.
He fought alongside the Americans and participated in the Liberation of Italy. But that didn’t keep him from denouncing, in The Skin, the Clear American conscious that consists of making peoples happy, even against their own will.
As a megalomaniac, he was second to none. He called a short story collection, Woman Like Me, and, proud of the idea, used it at the drop of a hat: book like me, dog like me, house like me…! Speaking of the house, he built it on a splendid site on the isle of Capri. Godard shot part of Le Mépris (Contempt) there, bringing Jack Palance, Fritz Lang, Michel Piccoli and Brigitte Bardot together in a baroque cast that even Malaparte himself could never have dreamt up!
It’s obvious: though Malaparte died a half a century ago, he still lives on, because he is the best character in his own work. And a lavish, worrisome, twilit, droll and desperate body of work it is. Thus paying homage to the man means turning the pages of the novel of his life.

After Villa Blanche, Bruno Tessarech sets off in search of traces and, as this very personal account unspools, tries to paint the portrait(s) of someone who chose the bad part (Malaparte) – because Bonaparte (the good part) was already taken!