M

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.