M
Son of the Century
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $23.99
Publisher Description
THE PHENOMENAL INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
M. is a startling look into the fascist mindset, a portrait of unrelenting determination, and an impeccable work of historical fiction.
Italy is exhausted. Tired of the political class. Tired of the inept moderates and the agonizing machinations of a democracy that no longer seems to be working.
While the leaders of the country have sat idly in the safety of parliament, achieving nothing, one man on the outside has risen to the top.
He is a misfit par excellence, a protector of the demobilized, a lost drifter searching for the way. He speaks for the outcasts, the renegades and the ideologically pure. He is a former socialist leader ousted by his party, the director of a small opposition newspaper, a tireless political agitator.
Like an animal, he can smell that change is coming.
He is Benito Mussolini.
M tells the story of the rise of fascism from within the mind of its founder. Rich in historical detail, and interspersed with real documents and sources, this is a masterful work of historical fiction with urgent resonance for our times
Reviews
‘An anti-fascist history lesson disguised as a novel’ New York Times
‘A masterful historical account, an extraordinary and stimulating book. A portrait of Benito Mussolini all the more accurate and powerful as it is factual and rigorous. An audacious, fluid, dazzling production. A brilliant story’
Le Figaro
‘An indisputable literary achievement. Scurati carefully examines history, with an experienced prose rich in literary allusions. Like Yourcenar, Gore Vidal, Sebald, Echenoz or Fences. Italo Calvino would have loved it’
El Paìs
‘Resembles a political thriller … surprisingly modern. A must read’ Die Zeit
‘The novel Italy has been waiting for. A masterpiece.’ Roberto Saviano
‘Panoptic and polyphonic, Scurati’s book gives us the experiences of the fearful and the feared, the rhetoric of both the revolutionaries and the reactionaries … a multitude of short fragments that collectively add up to an immense mosaic’ Lucy Hughes-Hallett, New Statesman
About the author
Antonio Scurati was born in Naples in 1969 and lives in Milan. He is a Professor of Comparative Literature and Creative writing at the IULM University in Milan and a columnist for Corriere della Sera. He is the author of various novels which have won an array of literary prizes in Italy, and M: The Son of the Century is the first to be translated into English. The first in a quartet of novels about Mussolini and the rise of fascism, it was the winner of the 2019 Strega award and has been translated into forty languages.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The expansive first installment of Scurati's Strega Prize–winning tetralogy, his English-language debut, covers the rise of Benito Mussolini in the aftermath of WWI. In 1919, a rally of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento signals fascism's rise. With the war ended, Italy churns in turmoil as the troops, described by Scurati's omniscient narrator as "forty thousand loose cannons," return home. (A dramatis personae catalogues over 70 principal characters.) Sweeping statements by Mussolini ("The age of mass politics has begun") combine with a range of primary sources, including newspapers and protesters' graffiti. Scurati captures Italy's past by blurring fiction's boundary with history, such as with chapters narrated by Mussolini himself ("I am the misfit par excellence," he avows). The historical sweep takes in fascist, socialist, and liberal ideologies competing for Italy's future, and the author captivates with portrayals of various characters' poignant struggles, such as the wealthy and obstinate real-life socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti, who was abducted and murdered by Fascists on June 10, 1924. The magisterial prose, adeptly translated by Appel, takes a bold look into the abyss, as readers will come to know "the Duce of fascism" and to understand "the Mussolini cyclone." Scurati's ambivalent portrait of a powerful fascist is sure to spark much debate.
Customer Reviews
A relatively new nation finding its place in Europe.
A chronicle of the rise of Mussolini in the period 1919 to 1924. The text describes well the march on Rome and the first two years of the Fascist government, if it can justly be called that.
A tremendous amount of detail supported by quotations from the print media of the times and private correspondence. The writing was laborious at times though always interesting. Recommended if you have any interest or familiarity with the Italy of that period. Still a young nation discovering its place in Europe and attempting to acquire the glories of the past. A new player in imperialist times.
This is apparently the first of four books that will describe the rise and fall of Fascism.