Gennaro Sangiuliano (Naples, 6 June 1962) is an Italian journalist and essayist, director of TG2 since 31 October 2018. He was director of the Roma newspaper in Naples from 1996 to 2001, deputy director of the Libero newspaper and TG1 from 2009 to 2018.
Who is really Vladimir Putin? A courageous protagonist of our time, capable of influencing international politics, or the former KGB colonel not too accustomed to democracy? To answer, Gennaro Sangiuliano retraces the main stages of the human and political adventure of “Tsar Putin”: rooted in the profound soul of Russia and in its socio-political peculiarities, Putin derives his success from his ability, in the face of demanding and dramatic challenges, to reshape an identity in which many Russian citizens recognize themselves. Sangiuliano’s reconstruction is enriched with interpretative hypotheses based on a solid recognition of the sources and helps us to understand something more of our present.
How burdensome is power? A lot, judging from what we read on these pages. However, despite its weight, that coveted headdress that establishes the privilege of being able to exercise one’s undisputed will, benefiting from every possible ease and opulence, escapes with the lightness of a feather in the wind in the unstoppable vortex of historical courses and resorts. . Power is a difficult thing to conquer, even more difficult is being able to maintain it for an entire existence. It is a craving capable of spreading like a contagious disease, with effects comparable to an epidemic enemy that has not spared the people, but not even the most emblematic and authoritative figures of our century. Power, like lust, is a magnet that inexorably attracts the human ego willing to jeopardize its essence and allow itself to be disfigured in exchange for an interlude of pure exaltation.
Through the words of Gennaro Sangiuliano the past forcefully enters our life, close to Putin with his glory, his passions.
This historical novel is a truly complex work, with concatenations that, in the eyes of the reader, appear easily understandable and immediately contextualized.
Everything in this novel moves to resurrect power struggles and territorial wars, be they temporal or secular, thus giving an intense, rhythmic reading, from which it is really difficult to break away.
Violent where needed, passionate at times, the book unfolds between precise and impeccable historical descriptions and dialogues and actions where it is the author’s creativity that fills the gaps, but always respecting events and what may have really happened.
A warning arises from these pages: if today you are high up and dominate, with power, tomorrow you could see your head rolling under the executioner’s ax. Choose your side well and move carefully, but sometimes it won’t be enough, and when you realize it will be too late.
A novel not to be missed!