Giorgio Fabre is a professional journalist and the author of various books on Italian fascism on which subject he has done extensive research. This book is the result of that work and the examination of documents in the Italian State Archives largely overlooked by historians. Fabre's conclusions challenge accepted historical thinking especially where Italian anti-Semitic policies are concerned. It is Fabre's conclusion that Mussolini found in Hitler's anti-Semitic ideas an echo of his own thoughts and in the translation of Mein Kampf a vehicle to kick-off his own anti-Jewish policies in Italy.

The Italian rights were paid for directly by the Italian treasury, even though the publisher Bompiani eventually put his name on the cover of the Italian edition. Mussolini paid 250,000 Italian Lire in 1933, equivalent to over $1,500,000 million in 2005 GDP US dollars -- by any measure an amount far beyond the actual commercial value of the book and far, far beyond the amounts customary within the industry in the early 1930s. What does this bizarre transaction reveal? Fabre goes behind the scenes of a deal that was kept totally secret from the Italian public at the time and until this day.

Giorgio Fabre was born in 1952. He is a professional journalist at Panorama magazine and author of several books among them: Roma a Mosca (1990) on fascist espionage in the USSR in the 1930s; and L'elenco (1998) (The List) about fascist censorship especially targeting Italian Jewish writers such as Alberto Moravia and Arnaldo Momigliano.

`Giorgio Fabre uncovers the extraordinary, secret and hitherto unknown story behind the publication of the book; and in doing so opens up some crucial questions in the interpretation of Fascism, its relations to Nazi Germany and its racial ideology.'
- Robert Gordon, Times Literary Supplement, June 2005