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Pasi

copertina
I Killed a Principle
The Life and Death of Gaetano Bresci
the Anarchist Who Shot the King

Illustrations by Fabio Santin

For the first time this tragic moment of Italian history is narrated from the point of view of the killer.


Summer 1900: Gaetano Bresci, a 31 years old anarchist weaver, arrives in Milan where the memories of the violent repression unleashed by the general Bava Beccaris against the rioting workers two years before are very much alive. In May 1898 in Milan the army had killed 100 demonstrators. It was not just Milan. Also Sicily and the Lunigiana were shaken by uprisings of workers protesting the rising cost of bread. And king Umberto I had ordered his generals to violently repress such incidents. Gaetano Bresci comes back from the States, where he emigrated three years before. He has a revolver with him bought in New York just before leaving to Italy. And he has a target: Bombard King, as people now call Umberto I… Three shots that have changed the history of Italy.


Paolo Pasi (Milano, 1963), is a journalist and a novelist. In 1995 he won the first edition of the Ilaria Alpi prize for investigative journalism. He has been working for the third channel the Italian national television (Rai 3) since 1996. Pasi is also a guitar player and a composer.