When Benito Mussolini founded, on March 23, 1919, the organization that would become the National Fascist Party, Italy’s top newspaper relegated the news to a blurb, roughly the same space devoted to the theft of 64 cases of soap. That’s where Antonio Scurati’s novel M: Son of the Century starts. It ends on January 3, 1925, the date commonly considered the beginning of Mussolini’s authoritarian reign, when he claimed responsibility for the murder of the Socialist lawmaker Giacomo Matteotti. By then, Il Duce had already been the prime minister of Italy for two years, and violent repression of the opposition was rampant, but it was the first time he owned up to it as the head of government, throwing off the mask. “If fascism has been a band of criminals, I am the leader of this criminal band,” he boasted to Parliament. The lawmakers cheered.
M: Son of the Century is the tale of how democracy can die to the sound of such thunderous applause. And, among its insights, it points to an unlikely enabler for Mussolini’s rise: the liberal establishment, the educated urban elite who assumed that they could control the rabble-rousing leader for their own ends.
The book is an ambitious exploration of the rise of fascism in Italy. It’s a self-styled “documentary novel,” a phrase used in a note in the original Italian edition to stress that all characters and events are based on historical documentation. And while this is largely true of Scurati’s technique, the book’s most interesting feature is the liberty he
— source theatlantic.com | Anna Momigliano | Apr 26, 2022