Antonio Scurati

Antonio Scurati (born 25 June 1969) is an Italian writer and academic. A professor of comparative literature and creative writing at the IULM University of Milan, mass media scholar, and editorialist for the Corriere della Sera, Scurati has won the main Italian literary prizes. In 2019, he was awarded the prestigious Strega Prize for his novel M: Son of the Century (2018), which is part of a planned tetralogy dedicated to Benito Mussolini and Italian fascism. It was at the top of the charts for two consecutive years, was translated into over forty languages, and is set for a television series produced by Sky Original in 2024.

Early life and education
Scurati was born in Naples to a Neapolitan mother and a father from Cusano Milanino. He graduated with a degree in philosophy from the University of Milan. Scurati continued his studies at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris. He later completed a PhD in Theory and Text Analysis at the University of Bergamo. Scurati worked as a professore a contratto (contract professor) at Bergamo, where he coordinated a centre for studying the languages of war and violence. At Bergamo, he also taught the theory and elements of television language. In 2005, Scurati became a researcher in Cinema, Photography, and Television. In 2008, he moved to the IULM University of Milan, where he became an associate professor and conductor of a creative writing seminar and a seminar in orality and rhetoric, as well as co-director of the "Arts of the Story" writing master's course, together with film critic Gianni Canova, dedicated to epic and document-based narrative writing.

From early writings to collaboration with the Corriere della Sera
In 2003, Scurati published the essay ''Guerra. Narrazioni e culture nella tradizione occidentale'', which was a finalist for the Viareggio Prize. His novel Il sopravvissuto (2005) was awarded (in a tie with Pino Roveredo) the 43rd Premio Campiello. The novel was also awarded the Premio Nazionale Letterario Pisa for Fiction. In 2006, a revised edition of Scurati's debut novel, Il rumore sordo della battaglia, was published. That same year, Scurati published the essay "La letteratura dell'inesperienza. Scrivere romanzi al tempo della televisione", a reflection on media, Dadaism, literature, and humanism. Scurati's writing appeared in the weekly publication Internazionale (magazine) and the daily newspaper La Stampa. In 2007, he published the historical novel Una storia romantica. In the same year, Scurati produced a documentary film for the Italian company Fandango. The film La stagione dell'amore investigates themes of love in contemporary Italian society, and continues the investigation conducted by director Pier Paolo Pasolini in his film Love Meetings (1965).

In 2009, Scurati published Il bambino che sognava la fine del mondo, a novel that mixes reality and fiction and is fierce criticism of mass media and the information economy as a whole. In 2010, Scurati published ''Gli anni che non stiamo vivendo. Il tempo della cronaca'', a collection of articles on contemporary topics of crime, politics, and current affairs. In the same year, he addressed the same topics in the column "Lettere dal nord" within the television program Parla con me (TV program). In 2015, he published Il tempo migliore della nostra vita, a biographical novel dedicated to the life of Leone Ginzburg. It was awarded the Viareggio Prize, and was a finalist for the Premio Campiello. On 20 September 2019, it was announced that Scurati would begin writing a column for the Corriere della Sera. His first article, concerning euthanasia, appeared in the newspaper on 28 September 2019.

M tetralogy, TV series adaptation, and commentary
In September 2018, Scurati published the novel M: Son of the Century (M. Il figlio del secolo), the first volume in a series of four books about Benito Mussolini. The tetralogy intends to tell the history of Italy beginning on 23 March 1919, the day the Italian Fasces of Combat was founded, and ending in 1945. The novel concludes with Mussolini's speech to the Chamber of Deputies on 3 January 1925, which officially established Italy as a dictatorship following the political crisis caused by the murder of Giacomo Matteotti. The first edition of the novel contained eight historical errors (in names, dates, and quotations) that were detailed by Ernesto Galli della Loggia in the Corriere della Sera, where he criticized Scurati for having "retouched the history" with his novel. Scurati responded to the controversy in a column also published in the Corriere della Sera. In it, he argued that the current era requires "a cooperation between the rigor of historical accuracy and the art of the novel", and that "telling is an art, not an exact science". The controversy also involved Pierluigi Battista, to which Galli della Loggia wrote again, stating that "creative license does not authorizes betraying the truth of history". In an interview to Il manifesto that was printed on 23 April 2019, Scurati stated that "giving a voice to Mussolini serves to free us from him", and added: "Above all it means dealing with the repressed collective conscience, fascism as one of the matrices of national identity and doing so through a new popular and inclusive narrative, according to the vocation of the novel form. I was driven by the belief that, after the historical fall of the anti-fascist prejudice, a novel about Mussolini was possible and, therefore, necessary precisely to renew the reasons for anti-fascism."

On the night between 4 and 5 July 2019, M. Il figlio del secolo was awarded the prestigious Strega Prize, and Scurati commented: "I dedicate the victory to our grandfathers and fathers, who were first seduced and then oppressed by fascism, especially those among them who found the courage to fight it with weapons in hand. I would also like to dedicate the award to our children, with the hope that they will not have to go back to experiencing what we experienced a hundred years ago, especially to my daughter Lucia." The novel was a success, selling over 600,000 copies by April 2022,  when it was being translated into more than 40 languages. The English translation by Anne Milano Appel was published by Harper on 5 April 2022. Also in 2022 it was announced that a production for a television series adaptation was under way,  produced by Sky Original and directed by Joe Wright, with Luca Marinelli as Mussolini, and scheduled for release in 2024.

In September 2020, M. L'uomo della provvidenza, the second volume of the quartet was published. It follows the rise of Mussolini from 1925 to 1932, recounting his liberticidal politics and the fierce power struggles and ideological battles of the National Fascist Party. It is framed by the omnipresent figure of Mussolini and his mediocrities and eccentricities. The novel was translated into French in 2021, and was awarded the 2022 European Book Prize. In September 2022, the third volume of the series was released, M. Gli ultimi giorni dell'Europa, which follows the fateful years from 1938 to 1940 that would lead to Italy's entry into World War II. The series, initially planned as a trilogy, by 2022 was expanded as a tetralogy. In October 2022, Scurati commented: "At this point it is clear that I will need a fourth and perhaps a fifth to complete the story." In October 2023, about the TV series adaptation, Scurati commented: "It will have black comedy tones. But Mussolini is not a hero." About the making of the script, he said: "The book was successful, many politicians keep it on their bedside table. But in the writing of the screenplay there were moments of disagreement, even conflict."

After the results of the 2022 Italian general election showed that Brothers of Italy (FdI), a political party with roots dating back to the Italian Social Movement that was founded by neo-fascists and Mussolini's followers after World War II, was the most voted and largest party in the Italian Parliament, Scurati described FdI leader and future Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni as a "heir of Mussolini". In an interview to Le Dauphiné Libéré, he had observed that "what is happening today in Italy is not a repetition of the past. But the resounding victory, in Italy, of a party that has its cultural and ideological roots in fascism is a fact. Italy is threatened by those parties that are the heirs of Mussolini not so much as fascisms, but as inventors of populism." For the 25 April celebrations (Liberation Day) of the Italian resistance movement to Nazi–fascism in 2024, Scurati was scheduled to deliver a monologue for the Italian public television RAI, warning that "the specter of fascism haunts the house of Italian democracy". He was subsequently removed from the Rai 3 programme Chesarà... hosted by Serena Bertone, who criticized the government's choice and said no explanation was given. This prompted criticism from parts of the Italian press, which published his monologue, and outcry from the opposition, as well as censorship accuses, which were denied by the Meloni government and RAI. In a letter published by La Repubblica, Scurati responded to Meloni, who had published his monologue, describing it as violence: "Questa, gentile Presidente, è una violenza. Non fisica, certo, ma pur sempre una violenza. E' questo il prezzo che si deve pagare oggi nella sua Italia per aver espresso il proprio pensiero?” (This, kind President, is violence. Not physical, of course, but still violence. Is this the price that must be paid today in your Italy for expressing one's thoughts?)

Personal life
Scurati grew up in Venice and lives in Milan, although he remains tied to Naples. Scurati is a honorary citizen of Ravello, where he spent every summer since he was a child; he played with his friends and had discussions with Gore Vidal, among many others. As told in a 2021 interview to La Gazzetta dello Sport, it was thanks to his father that Scurati became a supporter of Juventus, with the likes of Michel Platini and Zinedine Zidane, whose transfer in 2001 made his tifo vanish. In the same 2021 interview to La Gazzetta dello Sport, about former Napoli SSC footballer Diego Maradona, who died in 2020, he said: "Plus ultra on the pitch. Diego brought great joy, a man who became a myth like Hercules or Achilles. Superhuman and subhuman. However, a city that feeds on myths is destined for the worst. After all, the mythological message leaves man enchanted to destroy him. It makes me angry to see Naples like this, with all its contradictions. But it is love's anger."