Mussolini's Daughter

The Most Dangerous Woman in Europe

By: Caroline Moorehead

Narrated by: Kathleen Gati

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

The bestselling author of A Train in Winter returns with the definitive story of Mussolini’s daughter, Edda, one of the most influential women in 1930s Italy, whose life had more twists and turns than a spy novel.

Edda Mussolini was Benito's favourite child: spoiled and venal, uneducated but clever, faithless but flamboyant, a brilliant diplomat, wild but brave, and ultimately strong and loyal. For much of the twenty-year period of Fascist rule, she was her father's closest confidante.

In 1930, at the age of nineteen, Edda married Count Galeazzo Ciano, who would become the youngest Foreign Secretary in Italian history. Acting as envoy to both Germany and Britain, Edda played a part in steering Italy to join forces with Hitler. During this time, the Cianos became the most celebrated and glamorous couple in elegant, vulgar Roman fascist society.

Their fortunes turned in 1943, when Ciano voted against Mussolini in a plot to bring him down, and his father-in-law did not forgive him. Edda's dramatic story includes hidden diaries, her father's downfall and her husband's execution, and an escape into Switzerland followed by a period in exile. Moorehead draws a portrait of a complicated, bold, and determined woman—one who emerges not just as a witness but as a key player in some of the twentieth century's defining moments. And we see Fascist Italy with all its glamour, decadence and political intrigue, and the turbulence before its violent end.

©2022 Caroline Moorehead (P)2022 Random House Canada

Critic reviews

“Caroline Moorehead creates with her trademark narrative elegance and authoritative attention to detail this portrait of a complicated, at times cruel, woman. . . . Engrossing and enraging, Mussolini’s Daughter is in the end a balanced portrait of a woman who not only benefited from fascist crimes but was also a victim of them.” —NOW Toronto

“It’s a testament to Moorehead’s precise, empathic prose that Edda emerges not as the Duce’s devilish scion, but as a wounded, fragile being. . . . There is nuance and paradox: [Edda] appears not only an enabler and beneficiary of fascist crimes, but also their victim. It makes for a profoundly satisfying, albeit wistful, read.” —The Guardian

“Timely. . . . An engrossing portrait of a young woman forced to become a public figure. . . . Moorehead has a spirited turn of phrase, a keen eye for the telling detail and pungent quote and a gift for marshaling complex material.” —The New York Review of Books