The School for Dictators

1964, Ignazio Silone's powerful anti-Fascist satire

Author

Publisher

Printing Details

First edition thus (rewritten with an explanatory preface). Review copy, with publisher's slip loosely inserted. Hardback in dustwrapper. 20.5 × 13.5cm, 244pp.

Silone's powerful anti-Fascist satire. First published in 1939, the book is in the form of a dialogue and reveals how a dictatorship works and its anatomy; it exposes the tricks and violence that can threaten freedom, rights and even democracy itself. Whilst written in the context of Nazism and Fascism, "it was primarily concerned with the immediate need of defending democracy. Thus, while offering a critique of the Fascist and Nazi ideologies, it also attempted to expose their falsification of history and to define the social factors which facilitate totalitarian enterprises in the present age."

Condition

The book is in good sound condition with some tanning to the page edges. The dustwrapper is tanned to the spine and edges with some chipping along the edges and spine ends but has not been price-clipped and is now within a protective sleeve.