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For more than forty years, Portugal was ruled by the longest-running dictatorship in Europe, created and led by António de Oliveira Salazar. It lasted from the 1930s until the 1970s, surviving the regimes of Hitler, Franco and Mussolini. Salazar managed to maintain Portugal's neutrality in World War II by remaining loyal to the Portuguese-British alliance. Instead, he introduced a harsh system of repression. During his reign, a network of penitentiaries was established on remote islands and in medieval fortresses, and Lisbon became a city of spies. By the end of his life, he ruled a vast colonial empire that covered countries from Guinea to Mozambique, from East Timor to Macau. The corporate and authoritarian regime was overthrown by the Carnation Revolution of 1974, which returned Portugal to Europe.

The last years of the dictator's rule are associated with very fantastic events. During a pedicure session, he fell off his chair and hit his head. After brain surgery, Salazar lost his legal capacity, but no one ever dared to admit that he had been removed from power. Therefore, his entourage imitated his stay in office for two years in a row. The fiction of power was staged with cabinet meetings, fake state visits, and above all, an information system created exclusively for him: interviews on television and radio and unique, specially printed single copies of his favourite newspaper with Salazar on the front page.

The tragic and surreal vicissitudes of this man's life are masterfully presented by Marco Ferrari, an Italian writer and journalist with a deep knowledge of the history, culture and realities of life in Portugal.