Italy wants to come to the Frankfurt Book Fair with 100 authors
Published: Friday, May 10th 2024, 14:40
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As this year's guest country at the Frankfurt Book Fair, Italy will be represented by more than one hundred writers in October. The expected authors include well-known names in contemporary Italian literature such as Susanna Tamaro, Dacia Maraini and Alessandro Baricco.
The Italian government's special representative for the book fair, Mauro Mazza, also announced younger writers such as Maddalena Fingerle and Alice Urciuolo, born in 1993 and 1994, at the book fair in Turin on Friday.
Mazza pointed out that the two were not even born when Italy was the guest country at Frankfurt for the first time in 1988. The world's largest book fair takes place in mid-October. However, it is not yet known who will represent Italian politics at the opening. Rome is currently governed by a three-party coalition under right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, which is facing some opposition from the cultural scene.
The current Salone Internazionale del Libro in Turin - the Italian counterpart to Frankfurt - is focusing on German-language literature from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Among the writers invited are the winner of the 2019 Georg Büchner Prize, Lukas Bärfuss, and Kafka biographer Reiner Stach.
A joint appearance on Friday evening at the Salone del Libro by bestselling authors Salman Rushdie and Roberto Saviano, who have been under police protection for years because of their books, is expected to attract particular interest. Rushdie, who comes from India, has been the subject of a call for his assassination from Iran since 1989 because of his novel "The Satanic Verses". The Italian Saviano is considered to be under threat because of his revelations about the mafia's business dealings.
©Keystone/SDA
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