El fin y el principio (M, 5)

The monumental literary saga about fascism comes to an end, with the final six hundred days of Mussolini's reign leading up to his execution in April 1945, when his body was hung upside down in Piazzale Loreto, Milan. In this last volume, Scurati recounts the darkest months of the Italian Republic, the height of the worst violence in a civil war that sowed terror in the streets while the Allies bombed the country. The story centers on Milan, a ghostly place that represents the end of an imperial dream, but also the end of a man and his courtiers. Some fled, others died at his side, and still others reinvented themselves and perpetuated their names in power to this day. Concluding the grand literary undertaking begun with M. The Son of the Century, Scurati portrays the drama of fascism and its devastation as never before. By recounting the grim end of a dictator, he illuminates the birth of the first stirrings of freedom and democracy on the European continent.