Today, May 9th, the first Book Fair of the Annalena Benini era, the new director, starts: this year’s guests include Salman Rushdie and the Nobel Prize winners Orhan Pamuk and Abdulrazak Gurnah.
The Turin Book Fair begins on May 9th, the first to see Annalena Benini as Director, after years in which her role was that of Nicola Lagioia who, in recent years, has achieved record numbers of attendance and stands. The journalist, however, will begin with what will be the largest exhibition ever in terms of square metres, with 137,000 square meters of space and 15,000 more seats in the Auditorium of the Congress Center to attend the events in addition to the over 800 stands, 51 rooms and 180 laboratories which confirm the Piedmontese capital as one of the points of reference for world literature, as also confirmed by the many guests and events that comprise it.
Benini opens the doors to pluralism, underlining the desire to give everyone the floor: “It will be a happy show. I am very excited, but also calm because it is a truly beautiful, rich and quality show, with a beautiful program that gives everyone the floor. It is a place as healthy as this city is, I feel the desire to listen and discuss, I hope it makes your thoughts fly.” A thought that brings to mind what happened in recent years, when the exclusion of the Altaforte publishing house, close to CasaPound, and the challenge to Minister Roccella, which took place last year, triggered very vigorous protests from the Italian right.
As regards the spaces, Silvio Viale, president of the association that organizes the Show, explained: “We tried to solve the practical problems by increasing the gastronomic spaces, the bathrooms and strengthening transport”. This morning the first office to open was the Rights Center, the space for the sale of rights between publishing houses: “We have exceeded 500 accredited people – explained Piero Crocenzi, CEO of the Fair -, the same number as last year. It is an activity that we carry out with ICE which supports us in organizing and inviting international operators: we received 330 applications and we selected 70 quality operators. One of our main focuses is on the exchange of rights between publishing and cinema. We are happy to host film production companies from outside Italy for the first time, one German, one Swiss and one Austrian”.
Salman Rushdie at the Book Fair after the attack: how to participate in the meeting
This year’s Salon is preparing to start by hosting, as always, Italian and international writers, with two Nobel Prize winners such as the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk and Abdulrazak Gurnah, just released in Italy with “L’ultimo dono” for La Nave di Teseo. But speaking of great names in world literature, in Turin there will also be, among others, Salman Rushdie, who will present “Knife. Meditations after an attempted assassination” (Mondadori), the book in which he talks about the attack which victim in New York and which cost him the sight in one eye, the Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout who will also talk about her latest novel “Lucy in front of the sea” (Einaudi), the best-selling Chinese writer in the world, Yu Hua, whose the new novel “La città che non c’è” (Feltrinelli) is coming out and Eshkol Nevo will talk with Francesco Piccolo starting from his latest novel “Legami” and Joel Dicker with the new novel “A wild animal” (La nave di Teseo) to which are added Don Winslow, James Ellroy and Nicolas Barreau.
There will also be many exponents of Italian literature. In fact, the Salone will be attended by Gianrico Carofiglio, Silvia Avallone, Eraldo Affinati, Maurizio De Giovanni, Donatella Di Pietrantonio, Erri De Luca, Dario Voltolini, Emanuele Trevi and Alessandro Baricco, who after the second bone marrow transplant in the summer of 2023, due to the serious form of leukemia of which he announced the diagnosis on social media in January 2022, he is recovering from the disease and brings his latest novel to the stage with ‘Abel Concerto’, plus a memory of Ernesto Ferrero, Strega Prize writer , literary critic, at the helm of the Turin Salon for almost 20 years.
