‘Son of the Century’
By Antonio Scurati
Harper, 784 pages

Throughout this biographical novel, Benito Mussolini is referred to as the Il Duce of Fascism. He is the driving force of an extra-parliamentary, extra-constitutional force that is not good at winning elections and perhaps never, except through force of arms, commands the support of the populace.

Mussolini begins his ascent to power by bullying liberals and fascists, by mobilizing violent gangs, by discrediting in every way imaginable the very idea of a constitutional democracy. He often bluffs his opponents when a united opposition might have ended his career or, later, toppled him from power.

The dynamic of this novel resides in its unwavering focus on Mussolini, a former socialist, with a canny assessment of erstwhile comrades, who are always predicting revolution and the rule of the masses without ever actually employing the means to take power. It is power, Mussolini believes, that must be seized — no matter what the cost in lives lost, in laws broken.

This biographical novel abides by the conventions of biography, which means it proceeds chronologically between 1919 and 1925, in the slow increments of dates and places, as the fascists fight among themselves, beat and murder opponents, and in one dramatic scene nearly turn on Mussolini himself; they fail because they have no one to replace him.

Reports, newspaper items, letters, and other documents contribute to the biographical, researched feel of “Son of the Century.” Yet whereas biography usually remains in the past tense, this novel captures history as it happens in the mind of Mussolini, beginning three years before he triumphs: 

“Milan, Piazza San Sepolcro, March 23, 1919
THE FORMATION OF THE FASCI DI COMBATTIMENTO 

“WE STAND FACING out over Piazza San Sepolcro. Scarcely a hundred people, all men of little worth. We are few and we are dead. 

“They are waiting for me to speak, but I have nothing to say. 

“The set is empty, submerged under eleven million corpses, a tide of cadavers—reduced to sludge, liquefied—rising from the trenches of the Carso, Ortigara, the Isonzo. Our heroes have already been killed or will be. We love every last one of them, without distinction. We sit on the sacred mound of the dead. 

“The reality that follows every deluge has opened my eyes: Europe is now a stage without actors. All gone: the bearded sages, the monumental, histrionic fathers, the whining, magnanimous liberals, the grandiloquent, cultured, florid orators, the moderates to whose common sense we have owed our ruin from time immemorial, the bankrupt politicians who live in terror of imminent ruin, each day pleading to put off the inevitable event. For all of them the bell has tolled.”

This opening passage evokes Mussolini’s conviction that Italy is a failed state — morally, economically, politically. He appeals to Italians who do not feel like they have been on the winning side in World War I. His contempt for politics as usual is reflected in his silence as much as in the speeches he later delivers. 

What is important, in the wake of the world war, is to command the stage with the conviction that nothing before Mussolini matters anymore. There can be only his way forward, or no way at all. He is unfazed by general strikes of socialists or the opposition of other political parties. He always acts as if the old style of politics is doomed.

Although Mussolini gets his way through thuggery and assassination, Mr. Scurati shows that the Il Duce of Fascism is also abetted by Italy’s best minds and artists — Croce, Toscanini, and Pirandello — all of whom make their rather pathetic obeisances to fascism, as if there is no alternative to Mussolini.

Mr. Scurati identifies several moments before and after Mussolini’s usurpation of the state when his bluff could have been called. In effect, Mussolini fills a vacuum. The novel reminds me of Yeats’s “The Second Coming”: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”

To give Mussolini the title of son of the century mocks this man with a sense of destiny — successful, in the first stages of his rise, but doomed to fail, eventually, when the century calls his bluff. 

Mr. Rollyson is the author of “Faulkner: The Anti-Fascist,” which appeared in Moment (June 30, 2020).