It opens on Thursday 23 May Warsaw International Book Fair which, for the first time, will have Italy as its guest of honour. The event is held at the Palace of Culture and Science until May 26th and will see our country participate with a vast literary program entitled We need a flowerin homage to Gianni Rodari and fifty years after the publication of the album of the same name set to music by Sergio Endrigo and Luis Bacalov. At the inauguration ceremony Italy will be represented byItalian Ambassador to Warsaw Luca Franchetti Pardo.
Organized by the ‘History and Culture’ Foundation, the Fair is a central event in the cultural calendar of the Polish capital, which brings together numerous exhibitors from Poland and different countries around the world, with an international dimension that is growing year after year. The ideal place to continue the extraordinary journey that Italian publishing, literature and language are leading in the main literary fairs and salons of the world: a journey that after Sharjah (2022), Paris (2023), Bucharest (2023) and Tunis (April 2024) will reach its peak in autumn, when Italy will be the protagonist at the Buchmesse in Frankfurt.
There will be meetings, dialogues, lectios, round tables and insights that will make up a literary program that will come to life right in the city centre, in the rooms of the beautiful Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw. Among these, the Marmurowa Hall will host the Italian Pavilion, the area set up by Ice in which there will be a professional space reserved for meetings between professionals, a bookshop managed by the Polish bookshop Italicus and the Eccellenze Italiane exhibition. Figures for Gianni Rodari, promoted by Bologna Children’s Book Fair, Emilia-Romagna Region and curated by Giannino Stoppani Cooperativa Culturale – Accademia Drosselmeier, which will enhance the contributions of Italian illustrators to Gianni Rodari’s most beloved works. Another exhibition, Italian Stories, will find space in the Goethe Hall Foyer: produced by Melania Gazzotti in collaboration with the Flangini Association, it will be dedicated to the story that the most loved and recognized Italian illustrators of recent years have made of narrative through beauty of their covers.
