Gabriele D'Annunzio by Lucy Hughes-Hallett

Gabriele D'Annunzio by Lucy Hughes-Hallett

Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction
Winner of the Costa Biography Award
**Washington Post Best Books of 2013**
**Economist Best Books of 2013**

This fascinating life of Gabriele d'Annunzio--the charismatic poet, bon vivant, and virulent nationalist who prefigured Mussolini--traces the early twentieth century's trajectory from Romantic idealism to Fascist thuggery.

D'Annunzio was Italy's premier poet at a time when poetry could trigger riots. A brilliant self-publicist, he used his fame to sell his work, seduce women, and promote his extreme nationalism. At once an aesthete and a militarist, he enjoyed risking death no less than making love, and he wrote with equal enthusiasm about Fortuny gowns and torpedoes. In 1915 his incendiary oratory helped drive Italy into the First World War, and in 1919 he led a troop of mutineers into the Croatian port of Fiume, where he established a delinquent utopia. Futurists, anarchists, communists and proto-fascists descended on the place, along with literati and thrill-seekers, drug dealers and prostitutes. Three years later, when the fascists marched on Rome, they belted out anthems they'd learned in Fiume, while Mussolini consciously modeled himself on the great poet. Lucy Hughes-Hallett's compelling biography is a revelation both of d'Annunzio's flamboyant life and of the dramatic times he helped to shape.

Hughes-Hallett, Lucy: -

Lucy Hughes-Hallett is the author of The Pike: Gabriele D'Annunzio, which won the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Duff Cooper Prize, the Political Book Award for Political Biography of the Year, and the Costa Biography Award; Cleopatra: Histories, Dreams and Distortions, which won the Fawcett Prize and the Emily Toth Award; and Heroes: Saviours, Traitors and Supermen. She lives in London.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780307263933
ISBN 10	0307263932
Title	Gabriele D'Annunzio
Author	Lucy Hughes-Hallett
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Knopf Publishing Group
Year published	2013-08-20
Number of pages	589
Prizes	Winner of Costa Book Awards (Biography) 2013
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.