$9.99 on Kindle, Nook, Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play (March 2025)(cover: Mario Sironi, Ritratto di Margherita Sarfatti, 1916-1917, pastel and tempera on paper, 600 x 450 mm, Private collection)
Il Duce’s Other Woman by Philip V. Cannistraro and Brian R. Sullivan (XXX,000 words, YY illustrations)
“[A] well-informed account of the woman behind Mussolini’s rise to power... Margherita Sarfatti, an art critic and daughter of an influential Venetian Jewish family... became known as his ‘inspiratrice,’ directing his reading (Proudhon and Machiavelli, among others), bolstering his belief in his greatness, and helping him to mold his vision of a new Roman Empire. Though an ardent socialist, Sarfatti supported Italian involvement in WWI, an action that got her expelled from the Socialist Party. After the war, she and Mussolini worked together to forge the Fascist Party from two unlikely allies, the nationalists and socialists, and watched their creation grow to power, nourished by conditions of mass unemployment, street-fighting, and demagoguery given credibility by electoral success. Sarfatti, the authors contend, had ‘a far more flexible and inventive political imagination’ than Mussolini, and she was a central figure during these formative years — yet her affair with the dictator, and her influence, waned during the early 30’s. In 1938, in the face of Il Duce’s growing anti-Semitism, Sarfatti fled to Argentina with two suitcases full of jewels and modern art, treasures that she later parlayed into a position as one of the most important art collectors of the mid-century. She died in Italy in 1961... hers is a remarkable, sometimes tragic, tale.” — Kirkus
“[A] carefully researched, highly detailed, and interesting... history of fascist Italy. Its authors, both with academic affiliations, have avoided the pitfalls of academese to produce an account that will be enjoyable to the general reader.” — Barbara Walden, Library Journal
“A person of exceptional erudition and culture, Margherita Sarfatti (1880-1961) was the Italian dictator’s lover, political adviser and intellectual mentor, the authors show in their enlightening study... In their excellent biography of this difficult, dynamic, memorable woman, Cannistraro and Sullivan present aspects of her lover’s career not previously explored in detail: Mussolini’s experiences as a solider in WW I, his editorship of the socialist paper Avanti! and his active interest in creating a favorable international image of Fascist Italy.” — Publishers Weekly
“Philip Cannistraro and Brian Sullivan have drawn on an extraordinary range of private papers and archives in order to write her biography. Besides the main plot of Sarfatti’s long involvement with Mussolini, their work contains a number of fascinating sub-plots. Their biography is important for the history of Italian Jews, socialism, feminism, the relationship between art and politics, Fascist propaganda and the image of Mussolini’s regime in the United States... it is hard not to be impressed by her energy, her boundless appetite for new knowledge and new experience, and her resilience in adversity... a fascinating biography of a remarkable woman.” — Adrian Lyttelton, The New York Review of Books
“This long, detailed and deeply researched book... becomes less of a biography than an account of the development of Mussolini’s ideas, but with a new and original slant, never before explored... Margherita Sarfatti was a victim of her own making, corrupted by sexual obsession and a drive for power.” — Raleigh Trevelyan, The New York Times