In the opening pages of this fascinating book, Marcello Flores and Mimmo Franzinelli explain the purpose and nature of a project conceived to celebrate the eightieth anniversary of Italy’s liberation from Nazi-Fascism. Adopting a biographical approach devoid of rhetoric, the authors immerse the reader in an epic tale depicting a ‘mosaic of lives lived, battles fought and victories that were unknowable but fervently hoped for, representing the truest and most intense memory of antifascism’ (p. 19). It is the drama of the ‘broken lives’ that unites the subjects of the book, the 40 men and women who – although excluded from the pantheon of martyrs – remained trapped in the ‘geometries of violence’ that plagued the peninsula between 1919 and 1945 (p. 30). Flores and Franzinelli shed light on the many facets of Fascism, tracing the evolution of its power structures and methods of control: from the armed organisation of the Blackshirts – which transformed the movement-based squadrismo into the only political force in a totalitarian regime – to the Repubblica Sociale Italiana. However, it is through the individual biographical accounts collected in two sections (entitled Nell’opposizione al fascismo and Nella guerra di Liberazione e nella deportazione) that the authors provide an account of the various dimensions of dissent, the many forces that fuelled antifascism, the different forms of the clandestine struggle and, finally, the dual nature of the Resistance – armed and civil – during the two years that formed a tragic end to the war.

Set against the backdrop of events between the end of the First World War and the liberation of the concentration camps, each biography tells both a personal story and a national history. The focus is on prominent individuals involved in party activism, politics and trade unionism who soon fell victim to the repression of the squadristi, as in the cases of the Communist leader Spartaco Lavagnini, the Socialist councillor Attilio Boldori and the secretary of the FIOM (the metalworkers’ union) in Turin, Pietro Ferrero. Destruction, intimidation, punitive expeditions, raids, brutal attacks and even barbaric killings combine with stories of mutilated mourning and funerals held under the threat of persecution. It is worth mentioning in particular two victims of the Fascist policy of annihilating the enemy: Antonio Piccinini, whose assassination was depoliticised to allow the perpetrators to continue operating in secret; and Gaetano Pilati, a businessman and former Socialist deputy who became a ‘target of squadrismo’ (p. 66).

Following the biennio rosso (1919–20) and Matteotti’s assassination, Blackshirt violence became normalised and the leggi fascistissime were enacted. This exacerbated the difficulties faced by antifascists, who were forced to hide, go into exile, or face the consequences of political confinement (as in the cases of Mario Angeloni and Lea Giaccaglia). Inertia and complicity allowed barbarism to go unpunished as the antifascists were registered and interned or banned. Many of the stories chosen are, in fact, cases of failed justice. Both during the Fascist ventennio and in the postwar era, justice was denied as a result of amnesties, verdicts, rigged trials, pardons, delays or postponements of trials, defendants’ escapes, ‘sensational’ acquittals, proscriptions and evidence being covered up.

This last fact leads the authors to sift through public memory and evaluate the impact of the 40 victims of Fascism on collective memory. Many of them were recognised for their efforts, either by being awarded a medal for valour or remembrance, or by having a commemorative plaque erected in their honour. In some cases, their stories inspired well-known novels in Italian literature, such as the tale of Romolo Tranquilli, to whom his brother Ignazio Silone dedicated Fontamara in 1933, and Antonio Giuriolo, one of the protagonists of Luigi Meneghello’s I piccoli maestri. However, stories such as that of Angela Lazzarini – lost in the so-called armadio della vergogna (a cache of hitherto suppressed files on Nazi-Fascist crimes, discovered in Rome in 1994) – or Carlo Bianchi, a Catholic-liberal engineer who died in the Fossoli concentration camp, remained hidden for a long time. Other victims include Luigi Ercoli, who died in the Melk concentration camp in Austria; Giovanni Battista Domaschi, who spent years in confinement and imprisonment, suffering torture and trying to escape before being sent on a one-way trip to Dachau; the Socialist Filippo Acciarini and the lay nun Maria Luigia Borgato, who died in Mauthausen and Ravensbrück, respectively; and Roberto Enea Lepetit, a businessman who collaborated with and funded the Resistance movement. He died on 4 May 1945 in the Ebensee concentration camp, only three days after it was liberated.

The pages shedding light on the living conditions in prisons are particularly moving. Torture, restrictions and abuse drove the prisoners to the brink of utter exhaustion. Umberto Ceva, for example, took his life in Regina Coeli, while Iside Viana – one of the nine women featured in the book – ‘died in desolate solitude in the prison of Perugia after two weeks of high fever’ (p. 107). Arrests, death sentences and executions dramatically punctuate the lives of those who paid the price of freedom with the deprivation of speech, movement, expression and organisation, and of their physical and psychological health. The highest price was losing one’s life as well as one’s dignity. The beaten and raped bodies of Clelia Corradini and Angela Lazzarini, the publicly abused body of the partisan Iris Versari, and that of Ines Bedeschi, thrown in the River Po, serve as a reminder that repressive practices spared no one – militants, collaborators, members of the Women’s Defence Groups, staffette and women partisans.

Flores and Franzinelli explore several aspects of opposition to Fascism, both before and following the Resistance. Thanks to their clear and concise writing, they successfully synthesise this material, providing an impressive amount of historiographical information. Nevertheless, the focus remains on the personal stories of the subjects, whose subjectivity emerges in excerpts from their letters and diaries. Their private and public lives can be further explored thanks to the appendix, containing a bibliography and details of the available archival collections for each profile. Il prezzo della libertà offers the reader several starting points: individual experiences, focusing on gender, or placing the 40 ‘broken lives’ in chronological order, as suggested by the chronology at the end of the book. However approached, it is a compelling read.