Book Review - M: Son of the Century by Antonio Scurati

 M: Son of the Century by Antonio Scurati, translated by Anne Milano Appel

London: Harper, 2021 (original Italian publication 2018)    ISBN 9780062956118

Wow. What a book! The first book in a five-part series of novels that deals with the political life of Benito Mussolini, M: Son of the Century is a massively gripping (as well as being, at over 700 pages, simply massive) description of Mussolini's rise to power, beginning with the first meeting of the fascists, and concluding with him gaining a total grip over parliament after the murder of Giacomo Matteotti in 1924.

While this is a novel, it has a very documentary feel, with the short chapters evoking real events, with interspersed newspaper reports, telegrams and other archival material. The effect is a little like a kaleidoscope, each chapter (from a different character's viewpoint) adding a piece to the chaotic picture that was Italy after World War One, and on into the 1920s.

 And chaotic it was - Scurati evokes the turmoil of a country that "won" the war but gained no dividend from the peace that followed. Veterans particularly were disaffected, as socialism gained ground - Mussolini had been a high ranking socialist before the War, but left precisely because they didn't support it. 

The violence of the rise of Fascism, the ineffectiveness and fatal factionalism of the Socialists, and Mussolini's constant shifting of his alliances and strategies are what drives this book forward. The internecine power plays within the Fascists, especially when power beckoned, and Mussolini's struggle to control his party are especially well described. The characters of the main protagonists are also well drawn; not only the Fascists such as Mussolini himself, but also Balbo, Dumini, Marinetti and Rossi, but also Fascism's political opponents such as Bombacci, Turati, Croce, Salandra and of course Matteotti. Mussolini's lover Margherita Sarfatti is a major character in the novel - mentor and perhaps even eminince grise in the early part of the novel, but discarded once Mussolini ascends to the Prime Ministership, she becomes somewhat of a tragic figure, as does Rachele, Mussolini's wife, who is not much more than a cipher in the book.

If you are interested in Italian history and literature, I can recommend this book - there is also an Italian television mini-series that is worth catching up with.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - A Sicilian Man by Caroline Moorehead

 A Sicilian Man: Leonardo Sciascia, the Rise of the Mafia and the Struggle for Italy's Soul

by Caroline Moorehead    London: Chatto & Windus, 2026      ISBN 9781784745042

I have read a few books by Sciascia, and have found his allusive and cryptic style very appealing. His fictional chronicling of the truths of a Sicily dominated by the Mafia led him to become in some senses the conscience of decent Italians, in opposition to the forces that led the country into financial, political and moral corruption.

In this easy to read and well-written book, Caroline Moorehead traces Sciascia's life, both public and private, along with the development, growth and exposure - via the activities of some brave people - of the Mafia in Sicily and beyond.

Sciascia was a man of Sicily and so not only understood the Mafia mindset, but shared in it. A quiet and observant child, Sciascia closely watched the world around him in Racalmuto: listening to the gossip of his aunts, observing how residents interacted with each other, and the glaring inequality that was exacerbated by the control the Mafia had over society.

Moorehead explains how Sciascia's left-wing views were formed by these early experiences, as well as through the anti-fascist views of his family, and witnessing at first hand the lives of the sulphur miners of his local area both as a teacher of their children and through his father's work as a mine accountant.

Sciascia's time as a teacher was hard for him. He tried but mostly failed to instil a love of literature and the Enlightenment into his pupils, many of whom were going hungry because their parents could not afford to feed and clothe their children. Sciascia had always had the desire to be a writer, and his first major foray into literature, The Day of the Owl, set the tone for his early career. A story where a "man alone" works against society and the State in the pursuit of justice, only to be thwarted.

Sciascia's stories exposed the rotten heart of the Italian State, where corruption ruled, and nothing positive was ever achieved for the people of the country. Sciascia spent some time in political office, both in Sicily and in Rome, and on both occasions his terms ended with him fearing that Italy in many respects was a failed state, with the apparatus of government only there to support those with their snouts in the trough, whether that was the politicians themselves, businessmen, or the all-pervasive Mafia.

Sciascia, through his fiction, came to be seen as an expert on the Mafia. He became a kind of Twentieth Century Italian Cassandra: all of his predictions came true, but no-one ever believed his prophecies. Moorehead tracks the public Sciascia's feuds and polemics, mostly run and delivered through newspaper articles - she does this well, with enough information to put them in context for the English  language reader.

She does likewise with her tale of the Mafia through Sciascia's life. From the crackdown during the Fascist years, to the accommodation with the Americans during the War, also explaining how it managed to intertwine itself with the government and the Christian Democrats, Moorehead lays out how the Mafia did everything Sciascia said it would do, how it, rather than the government, police or judiciary became the "truth" in Sicily.

She tracks Sciascia's views of the progression of the Maxi-trial, which finished just before his death, and how the aftermath fulfilled the prophecies of a man who by the end of his life had become very pessimistic about whether Sicily could ever drag itself out of it's predicament. As he famously stated he could neither live in Sicily or outside of it.

About Sciascia's personal life, Moorehead does not say much - perhaps because there is not much to say. He was happily married with two daughters, and a wife who was his helpmate and to whom he was devoted. He was a great friend and a great enemy in that true Sicilian way - if he felt betrayed by any of his friends he cut them off completely. For someone who was famously taciturn he was much valued as a friend to spend time with, enjoying wandering through art galleries or antiquarian booksellers, or sitting around a table at a publishers or newspaper office. Many of his best friends were artists - he seemed to enjoy their company more than his fellow novelists.

The idea behind Moorehead's book is a clever one: a slightly different take on the Mafia to many, and a decent biography of one of the best Italian writers of the Twentieth Century. It didn't quite reach the heights for which I was hoping, but it is informative and interesting.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Leopard by Giuseppe Di Lampedusa

 The Leopard by Giuseppe Di Lampedusa, translated by Archibald Colquhoun

London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1960     (first published in Italian in 1958)

My wife and I recently watched the Netflix series Il Gattopardo with much enjoyment - it's well worth watching. Both of us had read the novel decades ago, and my wife is an ardent fan of the 1963 film starring Burt Lancaster. While the Netflix series is excellent - a real tour de force - we both thought that it didn't match with our memories of the book. So, I hunted out my copy and re-read it for the first time at least two decades.

What a perfect book this is - characterization, scene-setting, plot are all perfectly intertwined with the most wonderful descriptive writing about the land and people of Sicily (kudos goes to the translator here as well). Lampedusa perfectly captures not only the ennui of the Prince, with his acceptance that he is presiding over the decline of his family and the Sicilian way of life; but also the ignorant thrusting of the "new" Italy, with its plans and promises that will amount to nothing; and how money is merely transferring from one ruling caste to another. He shows us that the opportunists and the traditionalists all lose, while the plight of the poor doesn't change. Reliance on the beneficence of an aristocrat is just as precarious as relying on a government.

The sense of loss, but also of the permanence of Sicily as a place, is palpable throughout the book. As time moves on in the book we see the Prince's real sense of actual power to change things ebb away, as does his will to do anything about it. He is intelligent enough to know that the path taken by his beloved nephew Tancredi is the correct one for the new times, even as he can't bring himself personally to adapt to them - he is an aristocrat through and through, as was the author, which is why I think the passages that deal with how aristocrats lived and thought (eloquently espoused by Father Pirrone to his sleeping friend) ring so true. What was important to the Prince was important because it separated him from the common herd of Sicilians. 

The structure of the book allows the reader to become subsumed into the story - the descriptions of palaces, countryside, balls and dinners perfectly sets the scene of the end of an era, and the beginning of another. It's really one of the most perfect books that was written in the twentieth century, and I strongly suggest that if you haven't read it, you should! Both the film and the Netflix series are also very good, but neither are particularly faithful to the original.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - As a Man Grows Older by Italo Svevo

 As a Man Grows Older by Italo Svevo, translated from the Italian by Beryl De Zoete

New York: New York Review Books, 2001 (First published in Italian as Senilita in 1892, this translation first published in 1932)                                          ISBN 9780940322844

There is something about Italian Literature that I find, as an Australian, intriguing. The imagination, the mindset of the Italian literature that was produced before World War Two is very foreign to me - I think the mindset and imagination of Australians like myself have more in common with twentieth-century American and English Literature, which is no real surprise I guess. 

For me, European literature presents a language barrier (I don't read Italian) and so I am dependent on the translation delivering not only the words, but the style and the mood of the novel: for us uneducated souls who don't even have enough of the original language to make our own judgement, we are very much at the mercy of the translator. There has been much interesting work written about the art of translation, and personally I always wonder when reading whether I do have a direct line into the original work by the author, or is it more correct to think that I'm reading an interpretation, and the real author is in fact the translator? Hard to know, and one has to rely on those that do know to guide one to the best translations. Another issue, which struck me when reading the verso of the title page of this edition is the time lag between the writing and the translating. The original work in this review was published in Italian in 1892, but the English translation was not published until 1932: during that time the whole European world changed: of course a good translator would cleave to the original sentiment of the novel, but time gaps do give rise to more questioning of a translation (vide all the different translations of something like The Iliad over the years....). These are questions that I think have some validity when approaching translations of works, but questions I can't answer because I can't speak for the original text. Whatever the truth is for this particular translation, I found this a fascinating and in the end gripping work.

Simply put, the story is about an affair between Emilio Brentani and Angiolina Zarri. Brentani is a middle-aged insurance office worker who lives with his unmarried sister in what seems to be genteel poverty. Angiolina is younger, also unmarried, and beautiful. Immediately the gulf of a century hovers over the premise of this book - in our age what transpires in this book would not be considered an affair, or illicit in any way (but of course we are "enlightened" about such things, aren't we...). The story follows the anguish of Brentani, as he destroys not only his wellbeing, but his friendship with Stefano Balli, and his relationship with his sister Amalia. His monomaniacal desire for Angiolina is well described by Svevo: Brentani's construction of the lover Angiolina has very little to do with the real woman, as we the reader can see. When Brentani has his moments of understanding, he explains Angiolina's "whoring" away, or, if he does confront her, he cannot follow through with any decision to break with her.

As a Man Grows Older is a novel of class. Brentani is poor, but educated. His close friend Balli is a sculptor and artist. Angiolina is, as we can see from descriptions of her parents, a peasant. Brentani, despite what he says to Balli, and unlike Balli himself, cannot have "just" a dalliance, or keep a mistress in the commonly accepted way. He is in love with Angiolina, with all the joy and pain that entails. Angiolina, on the other hand, loves to be loved: she courts every eye, and has many admirers. Brentani drives himself wild with the thought that Balli himself will succumb to Angiolina's charms, but Balli is the least of his worries. The reader always knows a little more than Brentani of the true nature of Angiolina, and I found myself constantly hoping that Brentani would come to his senses...alas he does not before all is lost. It is ironic the Angiolina can have just the type of affair that Brentani wishes to have, just not with him.

Another thing worth mentioning about this book is the depiction of Trieste, the city in which it is set. The sights, sounds and weather of the city are very much part of the mood, and are skillfully used to draw the reader in to scenes where they impart another level to what is happening.

Overall, despite the barriers of the language and the years, I found As a Man Grows Older to be worthy of its claim to be a classic of Italian Literature.

Cheers for now, from 

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - To Each His Own by Leonardo Sciascia

 To Each His Own by Leonardo Sciascia, Translated by Adrienne Foulke, with and Introduction by W.S. Di Piero

New York: New York Review Books, 2000                 ISBN 9780940322523

I very much like the writing of Leonardo Sciascia, and have reviewed other works of his here over the years. To Each His Own is yet again a little literary insight into the mindset of Sicily - an ancient mindset that comes from a time before governments, and even before nation-states in the sense that we know them. A mindset of unspoken bonds, of deeds seen by everyone but at the same time unseen, and of silence and words chosen carefully.

The story revolves around Professor Laurana, the friend of Roscio the doctor, and the Pharmacist, who have both been found murdered. The Pharmacist had received, a few days before, a threatening letter, and the assumption of the town is that Roscio was killed merely because he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Laurana notices something odd about the threatening letter - the cutout words from the newspaper on the letter were from a very particular newspaper that only a few people in the town subscribe to. 

Laurana, initially as nothing more really than an intellectual exercise, follows this clue, trying to make sense of a senseless crime. The police and authorities, naturally, are following leads to do with the pharmacist, following every rumour. Laurana begins to suspect that Roscio was actually the target, and a few chance discoveries confirm his suspicions. He begins to wonder if Roscio was murdered so that someone could take his very beautiful wife for themself.

Unfortunately for Laurana he is too honest and too free with his words, and too trusting. When Roscio's wife suggests his suspicions might be true, he is blinded by her beauty, which leads to his eventual doom. The cruel irony Sciascia creates at the end of the book, when the reader discovers that many other men in the town had worked out what really happened (that Rosello, the lawyer, had been having an affair with Roscio's wife for many years, and organised the killing so he could marry her), sums up his Sicily: be careful talking about what you know, to whom, and know when it is safe to do so.

The beauty of Sciascia's work (and kudos to his translators is due here) is the way his language evokes Sicily. His short pithy sentences gives the reader a feeling of being there, of trying to navigate a course that keeps one safe, but still relevant and in the know, and how difficult it is to live and be true to oneself. How some people just go with the flow and forget the deeper life, and those who can't are at risk.

A short book, a very readable book, and an insight into another world. Recommended.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell