A professor of comparative literature and creative writing at the IULM University of Milan, mass media scholar, and editorialist for the Corriere della Sera, Scurati has won the main Italian literary prizes.

In 2019, he was awarded the prestigious Strega Prize for his novel M: Son of the Century (2018), which is part of a planned tetralogy dedicated to Benito Mussolini and Italian fascism.

[6] In 2009, Scurati published Il bambino che sognava la fine del mondo, a novel that mixes reality and fiction and is fierce criticism of mass media and the information economy as a whole.

[5][nb 5] In September 2018, Scurati published the novel M: Son of the Century (M. Il figlio del secolo), the first volume in a series of four books about Benito Mussolini.

[5] The tetralogy intends to tell the history of Italy beginning on 23 March 1919, the day the Italian Fasces of Combat was founded, and ending in 1945.

[5] The novel concludes with Mussolini's speech to the Chamber of Deputies on 3 January 1925, which officially established Italy as a dictatorship following the political crisis caused by the murder of Giacomo Matteotti.

[2] The controversy also involved Pierluigi Battista, to which Galli della Loggia wrote again, stating that "creative license does not authorizes betraying the truth of history".

[2][nb 6] In an interview to Il manifesto that was printed on 23 April 2019, Scurati stated that "giving a voice to Mussolini serves to free us from him",[2] and added: "Above all it means dealing with the repressed collective conscience, fascism as one of the matrices of national identity and doing so through a new popular and inclusive narrative, according to the vocation of the novel form.

"[2][nb 7] On the night between 4 and 5 July 2019, M. Il figlio del secolo was awarded the prestigious Strega Prize,[8] and Scurati commented: "I dedicate the victory to our grandfathers and fathers, who were first seduced and then oppressed by fascism, especially those among them who found the courage to fight it with weapons in hand.

[12] Also in 2022 it was announced that a production for a television series adaptation was under way,[13][14][15] produced by Sky Original and directed by Joe Wright, with Luca Marinelli as Mussolini, and scheduled for release in 2024.

[5] It follows the rise of Mussolini from 1925 to 1932,[17][nb 8] recounting his liberticidal politics and the fierce power struggles and ideological battles of the National Fascist Party.

[19] In September 2022, the third volume of the series was released, M. Gli ultimi giorni dell'Europa, which follows the fateful years from 1938 to 1940 that would lead to Italy's entry into World War II.

[29][30][nb 12] This prompted criticism from parts of the Italian press, which published his monologue, and outcry from the opposition,[34] as well as censorship accusations,[31][35] which were denied by the Meloni government and RAI.

[3][nb 15] Scurati is a honorary citizen of Ravello, where he spent every summer since he was a child;[5] he played with his friends and had discussions with Gore Vidal, among many others.

[42] As told in a 2021 interview to La Gazzetta dello Sport, it was thanks to his father that Scurati became a supporter of Juventus, with the likes of Michel Platini and Zinedine Zidane, whose transfer in 2001 made his tifo vanish.

[43][nb 16] In the same 2021 interview to La Gazzetta dello Sport, about former Napoli SSC footballer Diego Maradona, who died in 2020, he said: "Plus ultra on the pitch.