He knew everything about France, but nothing about Portugal; he understood what was happening in distant Moscow, but not in his native Lisbon. He didn't realize that he was no longer running his own country—he had been ousted almost two years earlier, but he still hadn't realized it. António Salazar ruled a vast colonial empire for over 40 years, but fell victim to his own pet project: censorship.

Italian journalist Marco Ferrari examines the history of Europe's longest dictatorship—from its origins in the 1930s, under Hitler, Franco, and Mussolini, to its decline in the 1970s, the era of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. It tells the story of the controversial figure of António Salazar, a former seminarian and provincial teacher who managed to keep Portugal out of the world war while simultaneously creating a sophisticated repressive machine and attempting, through bloodshed, to preserve the empire from disintegration. It's a tragic and incredible story about how dictators and dictatorships die.