【Guest of Honor - ITALY】...in the high Imagination
...in the high Imagination
Flair, imagination, the ability to imagine and narrate worlds, people, feelings: “...in the high imagination,” the theme that identifies Italy's participation as Guest of Honor at the Taipei International Book Exhibition 2025, highlights the creative process and its protagonists.
Inspired by Dante's verse “poi piovve nell'alta fantasia” quoted by Italo Calvino as an epigraph to the “American lesson” on visibility, the Italian literary program explores the creative paths taken by authors and illustrators, showing through their experiences and works how creativity is a key ingredient in building a dialogue between people and cultures.
A dialogue that Italy, after its recent participation as Guest of Honor at the Paris, Bucharest, Tunis, Warsaw and Frankfurt Book Fairs, continues to promote, and that this time turns to the East, only geographically distant. After Europe, Asia is in fact the second largest area for the sale of translation rights of Italian books, of major importance in the children and young adult sector. Elements brought into focus and enhanced in the creation of the program of participation, made possible thanks to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in conjunction with the Italian Economic, Commercial and Cultural Promotion Office in Taipei, the Ministry of Culture together with the Centro per il libro e la lettura, the Italian Trade Agency and the collaboration of the Italian Publishers Association.
Italy presents itself to the Taiwanese public through the voices of a delegation of 11 authors in which genres and perspectives alternate and mingle, opening windows on ever-changing imagery, from fiction to nonfiction, from historical to urban detective stories, from science to spirituality, from the artistic reinterpretation of great classics to the many expressions of literature for teenagers.
A journey through the current Italian cultural scene that does not disregard the tale of the past - but is always present - sketched through a portrait of its protagonists: so here in the spaces of the Italian Pavilion Umberto Eco, Gianna Manzini and Natalia Ginzburg, the fairy tales of Gianni Rodari and Carlo Collodi and the poetry of Umberto Saba come to life, recounted in Taipei by the authors present at the Fair alongside Dante and, above all, Italo Calvino. Indeed, 40 years after his death, a fitting tribute to the author who more than any other represents the many faces of the Italy of books. An author for adults and children, novelist and essayist, who worked in publishing houses and collected traditional Italian fairy tales in a central literary work.
Six days of meetings, dialogues, presentations and appointments “...in the High” Italian “Imagination” of yesterday and today, and an extraordinary opportunity for encounters and mutual enrichment that sees Italy take the Taipei International Book Exhibition another step forward in making its publishing output even more open and international.
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★Download the【Guest of Honor - ITALY】Information and Overview