The literary programme for Saturday, Oct. 19
Space for genres. The penultimate day of the literary programme of Italy Guest of Honour at the Frankfurter Buchmesse, curated by the Italian Publishers Association (AIE) with the advice of Ex Libris and the coordination of the Extraordinary Commissioner of the Government for Italy Guest of Honour, will turn the spotlight on genre literature, a historically very important branch of Italian publishing.
At 5 p.m. in the Arena, a tribute will be paid to the figure of Andrea Camilleri, the great Sicilian writer who passed away in 2019 and whose centenary since his birth will fall next year. It will be a multi-layered tribute, with an introduction by publisher Antonio Sellerio and the reading of a selection of unpublished letters, entrusted to Massimo Venturiello, voice of the audiobooks in the Commissario Montalbano series. It was precisely through the adventures of Montalbano, translated and beloved throughout the world, that Camilleri was among the main architects of the rebirth of the Italian crime fiction, to which he gave literary dignity and popular success. A princely genre in bookstores, detective stories has now differentiated itself in many directions, two of which will be featured in the double meeting that will precede the tribute to Camilleri starting at 4 p.m. in the Arena, "All Shades of Krimi": the Neapolitan-style noir of Maurizio de Giovanni, father of Commissario Ricciardi, Mina Settembre and “I bastardi di Pizzofalcone”, and the contemporary detective story of Antonio Manzini, creator of Rocco Schiavone. At 4.30 p.m. at the Caffè Letterario to dominate instead will be romance, the modern evolution of sentimental fiction, triumphant in online conversations and sales. The appointment will be with two queens of the genre, Erin Doom and Felicia Kingsley, respectively the author of the best-selling book in Italy in 2022 (Fabbricante di lacrime) and the best-read book ever in 2023.
The places of writing, between fiction, inspiration and reality
If so much time has been traveled these days in Frankfurt, Saturday will be traveled especially in space: that of writing, understood in its broadest sense and approached from multiple angles. In "Every Story is a Place" (Caffè Letterario, 3.30 p.m.), the guides will be Paolo Cognetti and Nicola Lagioia, among the most authoritative voices of 21st century Italian literature, as well as among those who have extended their creative and cultural reach even to alternative spaces to pure writing, from organizing literary events to editing magazines to adapting their stories to podcasts and the screen. But the day will include many stops: the "seaside towns and ancient villages" in which Vins Gallico and Sacha Naspini set their novels, starting point of the meeting at 10.30 a.m. at the Caffè Letterario; the sea of Ligurian Giuseppe Conte and the hills of Romagna's Davide Rondoni, creative muses and ideal landscapes of the second appointment that the programme dedicates to poetry (Caffè Letterario, 5.30 p.m.); and, moving from the enchantment of poetry to the harshness of reality, the macro-territories of Europe and Russia, whose complicated contemporary relations due to the war of aggression in Ukraine and whose historical cultural ties will be the focus at 11 a.m. in the Arena of a dialogue between Luca Beatrice and Luciano Mecacci.
At the origin of things
The day's rich programme also includes a series of encounters that – although very different in terms of the guests involved, the topics covered and the worlds explored – share the same look at the origin of things. Like the one between Erri De Luca and Guido Tonelli – longtime writer and passionate biblical scholar the former, physicist among the fathers of the discovery of the Higgs boson the latter – who among religious texts, philosophical reflections and scientific theories will go back to the origins of the universe ("Of Uncertain Genesis," Caffè Letterario, 12.30 p.m.). Another of Generation X's most beloved writers (and poets), Daniele Mencarelli, will confront his translator in Germany Annette Kopetzki on the origin of literary works and their rebirth in another language, interweaving the forms of storytelling with those of translation ("The Author in the Mirror," Caffè Letterario, 11.30 a.m.). Finally, on the origins of artistic images and their ability to illustrate the things of the world, Lorenzo Mattotti and Alessandro Sanna will converse, in the penultimate appointment that the literary program dedicates to the realms of comics, graphic novels, drawing and design ("Everything is illustrated," Caffè Letterario, 2.30 p.m.).
360 publishing: the end of cycles
As the end of the line of Buchmesse 2024 approaches, some of the thematic tracks that have characterized the Italy Guest of Honour programme begin to come to a close. Saturday morning at 10 a.m. in the Arena is the last meeting dedicated to children's publishing, in which award-winning authors Chiara Carminati, Davide Morosinotto and Marta Palazzesi will offer a ride on the "flying carpet of imagination". Also coming to a close are method talks by Loretta Cavaricci (Arena, 2 p.m.) and Reading in the Dark® organized by Fondazione LIA (Venice International University Hall, 2 p.m.). All events in the literary programme are available in Italian, English and German thanks to simultaneous translation through headphones.
Innocenzo Cipolletta, president of AIE: “Genre literature, which has such a large place in this penultimate day of the literary programme, has played a fundamental role in the history of Italian publishing in bringing new popular audiences to books, with detective stories for example, and it still does today in attracting young people to bookshops, especially with romance. For some time now, genre literature has deservedly emerged from the ghetto of those who wanted to relegate it to second-class literature, and we are proud to have brought outstanding authors to Frankfurt this year”.
www.aie.it