It is the Mediterranean soul of Italy that will be highlighted through the Italy program, guest of honor at the International Book Fair of Tunis
About fifteen Italian writers and many publishers will be present at the International Book Fair in Tunis from April 19 to 28. A large -scale Italian pavilion will be at the heart of this 38th edition of the Filt for the status of guest of honor of Italy for this edition.
Guided by the theme of the Italian cultural program “The soul of the Mediterranean”, several representatives of the cultural scene will present characteristic extracts from contemporary literature.
These are not monologues, but dialogues where one (re) discovers, one in the other, the expressive characteristics, the soul of the common Mediterranean identity.
This participation was made possible thanks to the support of Italian institutions – the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation with the Italian Embassy in Tunisia and the Italian Cultural Institute in Tunis, the Ministry of Culture, the ICE – Agence for Promotion Abroad and the Internationalization of Italian Businesses, the Center for Book and Literature and the Collaboration of the IEA – Association of Italian publishers.
In May, Italy will be the guest of honor of the International Warsaw Book Fair and, in October, the Buchmesse de Frankfurt, considered the main event in the field of publishing in Europe and in the world.
The guest authors in Tunis are Roberto Alajmo, Marino Bartoletti, Maria Borio, Pierfranco Bruni, Alfonso Campisi, Matteo Collura, Giuseppe Conte, Silvia Finzi, Roberto Mercadini, Claudio Pozzani, Tiziana Romanin, Evelina Santangelo E Marcello Veneziani. The meetings will be hosted by: Sonia Ben Salem, Alfio Bonaccorso, Hatem Bourial, Rosy Candiani, Meriem Dhouib, Raimondo Fassa, Antonella Ferrara, Mohamed Menzli E Fabio Ruggirello.
The cultural program, realized by the Italian cultural institute of Tunis, the IEA and the Cepell, will include meetings, dialogues, round tables and workshops for children and young people. The events will take place inside the Italian pavilion, a space of approximately 220 square meters set up by ICE in collaboration with the IIE, where spaces dedicated to Italian publishers present at the Fair will be installed. In addition, the Tunisian bookstore Al Kitab will exhibit books by Italian authors in different languages: Italian, Arabic and French. Titles appearing on the honor list of Ibby Italia 2023 will also be exhibited.
The opening of the Italian program will be made by the presentation of the IEA report on the Italian edition and will continue with meetings between the Italian publishing houses present (17 in total) and the Tunisian publishing professionals, including the fifty local publishing houses involved and the press.
EVELINA SANTANGELO
The cultural program
The delegation of Italian authors, rich, diverse and colorful, was invited to Tunisia to explore the Mediterranean soul in Tunis through opulent word games. On Saturday April 20, the writer and journalist Palermitain Roberto Alajmo will officially open the program. He will compare his privileged vision of the Mediterranean with that of his counterpart Hatem Bourial, Tunisian side.
Sunday, April 21, on stage, the poetry of Maria Borio, who will dialogue with her Tunisian colleague Abdel Aziz Kacem. Roberto Mercadini and Fabio Ruggirello, director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Tunisia, will approach the genius and obsession of Leonardo and Michelangelo, two immortal icons of the Italian Renaissance.
Sicily will be the main theme of the day on Monday 22. The morning, the writer and journalist Matteo Collura will explore the literature of the earth where “Europe begins and ends”, introduced by Antononella Ferrara and Alfio Bonaccorso, respectively president and executive director of the Taobuk festival, whose program of the fourteenth edition (Taormina, June 2024) will be presented in preview.
In the afternoon, Alfonso Campisi, lecturer in Romanesque philology at the University of Manouba in Tunis, will explore, under the moderation of Rosy Candiani, the complexity of the cultural mixture resulting from the meeting between Sicilian migrants and the Tunisian population, between the past and the present.
Tuesday, April 23, the writers Evelina Santangelo and Azza Filali will explore the Mediterranean through the eyes of the peoples who have lived and who still live in its banks, by exploring the “feeling of the sea” as a means of understanding life through eras and places. This trip will be followed by a didactic workshop organized by the Italian Cultural Institute of Tunis and devoted to the Italian language, one of the most popular foreign idioms in Tunisia.
Wednesday, April 24, the unlimited poetry of Giuseppe Conte, accompanied by the academic (Italianist) Meriem Dhouib, will bring together the Orient and the West, two extreme antagonists who, in the verses of the poet, have always been embraced by the sea, which is also a symbol of infinity. Silvia Finzi, academic and director of the newspaper Il Corriere di Tunisi – the only Italian language newspaper in North Africa to date – will retrace two centuries of the history of the press and the Italian publishing in Tunisi.
Thursday, April 25, the illustrator Tiziana Romanin and Sonia Ben Salem will trace an extraordinary bridge between Europe and the Fair, while Marino Bartoletti will guide the public through decades of art, sport and entertainment and will go from the interviewee status to that of an interviewer – led by journalist Mohamed Menzli – to discuss men (Mediterranean or not) leading men (Mediterranean or not). extraordinary lives.
Friday, April 26, after the screening of the documentary “Virgilio Duca di Dante” produced by Habib Mestiri, two events led by Professor Raimondo Fassa will take place. They will be respectively dedicated to the history of contemporary music and poetry. The first event will host the archaeologist and writer Calabrais Pierfranco Bruni, who will sketch a cultural geography of the Mediterranean by browsing the Ligurian trails of Fabrizio de André and the coastlines of Franco Califano life.
The second event will focus on the “open words” of the Genoese poet Claudio Pozzani, who find in the lyric verse their reference literary genre.
The morning of Saturday April 27, featured Giambattista Vico, on which will discuss the philosopher Marcello Veneziani and the university professor La Manouba de Tunisie, Ahmed Somai, deep experts of the work of one of the Mediterranean thinkers par excellence, difficult to categorize and necessary to know.
At the end of the program, there will be meetings dedicated to children and young people, aimed, among other things, to highlight the historic and natural beauties of Italy: that of Saturday afternoon with Geronimo Stilton of Elisabetta Dami and that of Sunday with the trip to Italy of Pimpa de Altan
