M

Son of the Century

By: Antonio Scurati, Anne Milano Appel - translator

Narrated by: Jonathan Oliver

Length: 27 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's summary

The phenomenal international best seller.

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 agonising 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 demobilised, 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.

©2021 Antonio Scurati (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Critic 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)

What. A. Book.

I'm very picky when it comes to anything fiction, especially historical fiction. I think fiction writers can try too hard to make things sound dramatic, seem more sophisticated or more interesting than the story can offer. So many books start very well - first chapter - only for just about all the creativity to be concentrated there, with nothing left for the rest.

I don't think I've ever encountered a book like this. The writing is truly phenomenal; I don't know if it's something about Italian, or the translator just being really darn good, or whether the style simply translates well. It is powerfully written. I'm not sure how easily it might be consumed by someone unfamiliar with this period of history, however. I feel like this book could have been written from the perspective of Benito Mussolini's brain, his character feels so remarkably accurate. Obviously this isn't complete fiction, but you have a distinct sense of being there - in that time - in a way that I have never experienced from any book, fiction or not. I love that it's not all just dialogue. In fact there is rather little dialogue; it doesn't really need much. It's more like looking through a porthole out onto the streets of Milan and Rome, or observing the peasants of the countryside standing in defense of their little towns, scaring off bands of Arditi super-soldiers-turned-fascists, armed wth scythes, shovels, and pickaxes. One looks out over the many balconies from which demagogues proclaim their nationalist creeds and into the parliament buildings where Socialists fret over the latest street violence. One even peers over the factory walls to see striking workers, some taking control of their workplaces to run them without the big capitalist owners. It's like a visual experience.

The narrator gives it so much character. In fact, through Jonathan's voice, one lives this vicarious experience like it were all right here, right now, all around you. I could not imagine this book narrated by anyone else, though this is the first time I've heard his narration before.

I don't know what more I could say without gushing here, this could quite possibly go down as one of the greatest books of this decade. It is phenomenal. Get it!

The rise of Mussolini's fascists

The narrator and the book's author unpick for us through references from contemporary chronicles, speeches and diarists the mechanisms by which Mussolini rose to power. Full of insightful detail, it is a history lesson that all who are interested in politics need to heed. Although a lengthy work the narrator Jonathan Oliver keeps you engaged throughout. An major dissemination of the route to power in post WW1 Italy.