Roberto Saviano excluded from Frankfurt Book Fair by Italian publishers

The controversy is shaking Italy: many see in the ousting of the author of “Gomorrah” a sidelining linked to the criticism he expressed against Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

Lhe Frankfurt Book Fair (Frankfurter Buchmesse), the world’s largest publishing fair, opened on Wednesday in a controversial atmosphere. The reason for this is the absence of the writer and journalist Roberto Saviano from the official Italian delegation, even though Italy is the “guest of honor” country at the event this year.

The association of Italian publishers has, in fact, not retained the name of Saviano, the author of the famous Gomorrah (2006), a vast investigation into the Italian mafia, on the list of some ninety Italian authors invited to Frankfurt. If the official reason for this absence is the desire of the publishers of “choose authors whose works were entirely original” and of “give a voice to those who have not yet had it”, many see Roberto Saviano’s ouster as a sidelining linked to the virulent criticism he has leveled against the far-right Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, since coming to power – criticism following which the The writer was convicted of defamation last year.

On social networks, Roberto Saviano attacked the “the most ignorant government in the history of Italy”. As early as last June, in solidarity with him upon the announcement of his absence from the Italian selection, around forty Italian authors signed an open letter to denounce “an increasingly stifling political interference in the cultural domain” and a degradation of freedom of expression in the country. Paolo Giordano and Antonio Scurati (the author of the trilogy M and the recent test The Politics of Fear. Manifesto against populism and for democracy) then made it known that they refused to be part of the official delegation. Roberto Saviano should however indeed be present in Frankfurt, not in the Italian delegation but at the invitation of his German publisher.