'A beguiling portrait... reminds us that, ideologically and culturally, Mor�s anticipates the tragedies of the 20th century, and also those of today' The Times

One of the most anticipated books of the year according to Financial Times and New Statesman

The extraordinary story of the nineteenth-century French-Italian aristocrat Marquis de Mor�s, the father of fascism, and his ominous legacy

In nineteenth-century France, the first fascist was born. Decades before Mussolini, the Marquis de Mor�s became the first populist and openly antisemitic leader in the Western world. A key figure behind the Dreyfus affair, he tore France apart with his inflammatory media rhetoric and violent stunts. Who was this man, who both anticipated and propelled the fascist politics that erupted in the twentieth century?

Drawing on a wealth of original sources, award-winning historian Sergio Luzzatto explores the forgotten story of a father of fascism. He shows how, after losing aristocratic status in modern, democratic France, Mor�s led an adventurous life cattle ranching on the American frontier and building a railway in the jungles of Indochina – yet found all his schemes dogged by failure. He follows in Mor�s’s footsteps, as, blaming supposed Jewish machinations for his defeats, he returned to France and soon controlled a large, violent militia of disgruntled workers. Even when his rapid political rise was torpedoed by a highly publicized financial scandal, his shadow continued to loom. In Vichy France, as Jewish people were being deported to Auschwitz, officials would gather to celebrate Mor�s’s memory. Vivid and unsettling, The First Fascist is an engrossing exploration of the roots of our present discontent.

About the Author

Sergio Luzzatto is Emiliana Pasca Noether Chair in Modern Italian History at the University of Connecticut. A winner of the Cundill History Prize, he is the author of The Body of Il Duce and Primo Levi’s Resistance, among other books.

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