Antonio Scurati

Antonio Scurati is an Italian novelist and public intellectual born in 1969 in Naples. He is a professor of comparative literary studies at IULM University in Milan. He is known for his wide-ranging intellectual engagement with politics, history, and culture, and has been a prominent commentator on Italian democracy and the legacy of fascism. Scurati is the author of numerous novels, including Il sopravvissuto (The Survivor, 2005, Premio Campiello), Una storia romantica (2007), and Il tempo migliore della nostra vita (2015). His fiction consistently engages with violence, political extremism, and historical catastrophe. M. Il figlio del secolo (M. The Son of the Century), his 2019 Premio Strega winner, is the first volume of a projected multi-volume fictional biography of Benito Mussolini, covering the years 1919 to 1925. The novel is based on meticulous historical research but written as gripping narrative fiction, following Mussolini's rise to power with disturbing vividness. The M. series has become a major international publishing event, translated into dozens of languages. Scurati is a significant public intellectual and has been a prominent voice warning about the return of fascist politics in contemporary Europe.