Thursday, February 13, 2025
At 6:30 PM
At ICI London
We are thrilled to host this unmissable literary event featuring Massimo Franco, political columnist for Corriere della Sera, in conversation with John Hooper, Italy and Vatican correspondent for The Economist.
The discussion will focus on Massimo Franco’s new book, Il fantasma di Hammamet (The Ghost of Hammamet), published by Solferino.
Hammamet is the place Bettino Craxi chose to escape the trials of Mani Pulite: a villa in Tunisia on the “hill of jackals and snakes.” But it is also a political metaphor for the end of Italy’s First Republic and the unresolved remnants of that era. Revisiting this surreal chapter may seem like political archaeology, but it remains a pressing and contemporary issue. It raises questions about the primacy of politics and its relationship with the judiciary—conflicts that still resonate today.
The book provides a lens through which to retrace the decline and downfall of a party, the PSI (Italian Socialist Party), and especially the man who shaped it while attempting, in parallel, to reform Italy. It narrates the trajectory of one of the most powerful and controversial politicians in Italian history, brought down by bribery scandals.
This is why, 25 years after Craxi’s death, this book—originally conceived in 1995 from dozens of direct testimonies and private meetings in what was seen by magistrates and much of the country as his Tunisian escape, and by his family and socialists as his exile—has been reissued in a new, expanded edition.
It is a vivid document that lays bare the connections, hypocrisies, and unspoken intrigues that tied the First and Second Republics together: from the voracious entourage that ended up isolated, to the “treasure” swallowed in a labyrinth of frontmen. The book brings to life mysterious assailants, vassals and new praetorians, bishops and women, statesmen, spies, and dealmakers—all revolving around Craxi.
He is the ghost of Hammamet, and Italy can only free itself from him once it confronts its own unresolved issues, without ignoring its inner absences.
This event will be held only in English.
Book HERE
About the Speakers:
Massimo Franco, political columnist for Corriere della Sera, has worked for Avvenire, Il Giorno, and Panorama. He is a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. His books include Il Vaticano secondo Francesco (The Vatican According to Francis, Mondadori, 2014), Imperi paralleli (Parallel Empires, Mondadori, 2005; il Saggiatore, 2016), L’assedio (The Siege, Mondadori, 2016), and for Solferino, L’enigma Bergoglio (The Bergoglio Enigma, 2020), C’era una volta Andreotti (Once Upon a Time Andreotti, 2021), Il monastero (The Monastery, 2022), and Secretum (2024, co-authored with Sergio Pagano).
John Hooper is the Economist’s Italy and Vatican correspondent, author of The Italians and The New Spaniards, and co-translator into English of Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio. He is a former lecturer at Stanford University’s Florence campus and an honorary fellow of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge.