Emilio Lussu

Biography

Emilio Lussu (4 December 1890 – 5 March 1975) was a Sardinian and Italian writer, anti-fascist intellectual, military officer, partisan, and politician. He is also the author of the novel One Year on the High Plateau. Lussu was elected multiple times to Parliament, serving as a member of the Constituent Assembly of Italy for the constituency of Cagliari and twice as a minister. He founded the Sardinian Action Party and co-founded the Justice and Freedom movement. As an anti-fascist, he was assaulted, wounded, and sent to confinement to Lipari in the Aeolian Islands by the Italian fascist regime as a direct decision of Benito Mussolini. After escaping, with Carlo Rosselli and Fausto Nitti, he spent about fourteen years as a refugee abroad. He served as an officer in World War I, where he received multiple decorations, and participated in the Spanish Civil War as a political leader and in the Italian Resistance.