The Congress of the Dead constitutes a fierce indictment against war, against every form of war that humanity has waged, as well as against all kinds of violence. It is perhaps the most important work of Gino Giin, a book of fundamental significance in the panorama of both Italian literature and Italian political history. Published in 1921, the day after the end of World War I, The Congress of the Dead quickly became rare, as it was seized and destroyed by the fascists with particular ferocity, because it constituted an offense to official patriotism, to the official ideology and narrative regarding the slaughter of the Great War.

The dead from the great wars of history convene an extraordinary congress in the afterlife in order to learn where all these new arrivals and great turmoil come from. Why did those who wished to live die in the prime of their lives? In the face of the flood of dead caused by the slaughterhouses of the Great War, the space is no longer sufficient for all. Initially, those who were responsible for their death speak, the executioners, the conquerors (Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Attila, Robespierre, etc.). Then the anonymous dead themselves take the floor, posing the fundamental question: Why did we ultimately get killed? By whose will were we led to death?

"The Congress of the Dead was the last message of a man who throughout his life had practiced the virtue of forgiveness in the face of the ignorance of fools, the hubris of the bigoted, the aggression of the violent. It is perhaps the highest work of Gino Giin and even today - and perhaps more today than yesterday - it is impossible for anyone to read it without being moved. The work, which was immediately seized, destroyed, and is now almost rare, caused the gentle author many persecutions and disturbances. To us children, Giin was mainly known for this cursed work, about which everyone spoke scandalized and which none of us had read; and it would be blasphemous for anyone to show the boldness to read it... A silence of stigma and disapproval had fallen upon it." (Norberto Bobbio)