Emilio Lussu (4 December 1890 – 5 March 1975) was a Sardinian and Italian writer, anti-fascist intellectual, military officer, partisan, and politician.

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.

Lussu married Joyce Salvadori, a notable poet, and member of the noble Paleotti family of the Marche, who were counts of Fermo.

This thinly fictional account tells of the lives of soldiers during World War I and the trench warfare they encountered.

Gifted with a keen sense of observation and sharp logic, Lussu demonstrates how distant the real life of soldiers is from everyday activities.

In a notable passage, he describes the silent terror in the moments preceding an attack, as he is forced to abandon the "safe" protective trench for an external unknown, risky, undefined world: "All the machine-guns are waiting for us".

Between 1941 and 1942 he was the protagonist of the most important "episode" of the collaboration between British Special Operations Executive and Italian antifascism in exile.

He tried to get the clearance for an antifascist uprising in his home island of Sardinia, which the SOE supported at some stage but did not receive approval from the Foreign Office.

Ideological differences with the political line of Partito Sardo d'Azione deepened and Lussu left Sardinia.