L'esploratore del Duce. Le avventure di Giuseppe Tucci e la p... by Enrica Garzilli

The book is on Tucci “adventures” as explorer, scholar and politician, and on other public figures of the time who protected him or whom he worked with (Nobel laureate Tagore, Giovanni Gentile, Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, whom he met in Tibet in 1948, etc.). The second message the cover should convey is this feeling of history, as this is mainly a 'serious' history book about Tucci, and the history of Fascism in Asia. In the book I also demonstrate through documents that Mussolini wanted to “take possession” of India, replacing the British Crown rule with Italy. His history is also closely linked to that of Fascist Italy and the politics of Mussolini in Asia (especially in India, Afghanistan, Japan). This is the first message that I would like the book cover to convey: the sense of adventure and romance of this “treasure hunter”. He was a real treasure hunter, Indiana Jones-like. He was also very charismatic, and although not tall and not particularly handsome, he was a well known womanizer. He brought home one of the world's largest collections of manuscripts in ancient Sanskrit and Tibetan, a collection of ancient thangkas (Buddhist painted scrolls), and various invaluable archeological treasures. He led 8 expeditions to Tibet (1927-1948) and 5 or 6 to Nepal, always hunting for ancient manuscripts, for pieces of arts and for archaeological treasures. He built up the cultural politics of Italian Fascism in India, doing propaganda work for Mussolini. He was a famous explorer of Nepal, the main Tibet explorer in the first half of the 20th century, a (still) leading scholar on Buddhist Tibet, and also a cultural promoter and a politician-diplomat.

This book is the first biography of one the main explorers of Asia in the 20th century, the Italian Giuseppe Tucci (1894-1984).

L'esploratore del Duce. Le avventure di Giuseppe Tucci e la p... by Enrica Garzilli