The most depressingly exhilarating scene in Giuliano da Empoli’s new book, The Hour of the Predator, is set at the inaugural dinner of the Obama Foundation, in 2017, during Donald Trump’s first term.
Da Empoli, a liberal political operative and admirer of Obama’s, was brimming with anticipation for the event. Given the dire political circumstances, he was somewhat perplexed to learn, once seated, that the dinner’s message was centered on the virtues of Michelle Obama’s organic vegetables. He grew even more uncomfortable when he found out that “conversation facilitators” would be in charge of the night’s proceedings, directing guests to answer questions such as “Why am I called that way?” and “Who would I like to be?”
At the next table, Captain Rocca, the security agent escorting Italy’s delegation, made the rookie mistake of answering that he would just like to be himself, prompting the facilitator to chastise him. “I couldn’t help thinking that, if he had been an American voter, the captain—one of the few ordinary people at the dinner—would have walked out of that evening a Trump supporter,” da Empoli writes.
His succinct dispatch from peak woke speaks louder than many of the essays saturating the identity-politics-hangover landscape. It’s also one of the few passages from the book that elicits a smile, albeit a bitter one.
The Hour of the Predator is the short and terrifying true story of the beastly forces dominating our time, where vulgar strongmen, ferocious autocrats, transhuman technologists, and libertarian tyrants dressed in Star Trek fashion are redefining the international order. But, more importantly, it’s a story of disillusionment.
The 90s brought with it an optimistic conviction that the rule-based liberal international order was the world’s inevitable destiny. In reality, it was only a fragile parenthesis, presumptuously mistaken for the end of history: “The hour of the predators,” da Empoli writes, “is nothing but a return to normality. The anomaly was the brief period in which we thought we could contain the bloody pursuit of power within a system of rules.”
Da Empoli is an Italian-Swiss political adviser, writer, and Sciences Po professor who served as a counselor to former Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi before moving to France, where he had lived growing up during his cosmopolitan childhood as the son of an economist working for international institutions. His 2022 novel, The Wizard of the Kremlin, became a publishing phenomenon in France, selling more than 650,000 copies. It was read eagerly by members of the Establishment seeking insights into the soul—or what remains of it—of Vladimir Putin. A film adaptation starring Jude Law and a whole roster of stars premiered in Venice last August and will be released in 2026.
To tell the story of the new global power structure, da Empoli opted for firsthand reportage, composing a kind of notebook built from scenes drawn from his own political experience and from a mission to the U.N. General Assembly he joined at the invitation of French president Emmanuel Macron. The scenes are interspersed with reflections drawn from the great storytellers of power—from Plutarch to Kissinger, passing through Machiavelli, who appears even in the pages where he isn’t named.
Human nature doesn’t come out looking very good. “I wanted to capture the desperate shock of the transformation we are living through, to provoke a reaction in the reader,” da Empoli tells me. “The world of rules we thought we had built has been radically called into question, but the rise of this new, relentless power has not been read politically.” He adds that there was, originally, a final chapter that served as a kind of redemption, “but I chose not to include it, precisely to focus on the shocking effect.”
Da Empoli looks at the rise of Argentina’s chain-saw-wielding Javier Milei and the regime of El Salvador’s self-described philosopher king, Nayib Bukele, who has imprisoned tens of thousands of alleged criminals based solely on their tattoos. He writes, too, of the unchecked lords of Big Tech—such as Sam Altman and Jeff Bezos—portrayed as Spanish conquistadores exterminating Aztec civilization with divine-like weapons and powers.
In 2024, da Empoli met with Saudi prince Mohammed bin Salman, a man of exquisite manners and impeccable hospitality, at the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh. In the book, he reminds readers how it was in that same hotel that, just recently, bin Salman began the two years of torturous purges that eliminated his rivals and consolidated his control of the country.
Political violence has a personal dimension for the author. In 1986, his father, Antonio, then head of the economic advisers to the Italian prime minister, was the target of a shooting carried out by the Union of Communist Fighters, a far-left terrorist group opposed to the government’s budget law. The assault injured him in one leg and hand.
Da Empoli has the advantage of coming from what he calls the “Silicon Valley of populism,” Italy—an unrivaled laboratory of populist leaders and unholy alliances that offers hints about the future. While Trump was being elected for the first time, Italy had already lived through nearly 20 years of Silvio Berlusconi and was preparing to form a bizarre coalition government between a right-wing nationalist party and a shape-shifting movement born around the cri de coeur Vaffanculo (“Go f*** yourself”).
Meanwhile, Renzi—the former boss with whom da Empoli broke—had failed spectacularly as a national leader, and, while keeping his Senate seat, left his career as an international speaker and consultant in the service of new powers. Shortly after the end of the purges by M.B.S. that da Empoli describes, Renzi showed up onstage alongside the Saudi prince, praising him for the “new Renaissance” he was bringing to the country. The book, in its subtext, also speaks of the shrewdest among the liberal champions who bowed to the new predators.
Trump is everywhere and nowhere in the book. “I took quite literally what Kissinger said,” da Empoli tells me, “that some political figures are agents of an epochal transformation, though they may not even be fully aware of it. I think he’s a catalyst for something deeper.” Had Kamala Harris won, da Empoli reasons, “nothing would have really changed, because history at this moment leans toward the predators.”
If you’re looking for a more uplifting take on our times, you can always check out Michelle Obama’s book on the White House vegetable garden.
Mattia Ferraresi is the managing editor at the Italian newspaper Domani. You can read his past AIR MAIL stories on Trump’s mini-me and Pope Francis’s manuscript thief here
