Taobuk – Taormina International Book Festival arrives at Lima book fair which sees Italy for the first time as a guest of honor. Among the appointments From 18 July to 6 August 2025 Two will be dedicated to the Festival.
The first Build culture. Festivals, visions and literature of this (Monday 21 July at 18 in the Italian pavilion) with Antonella Ferrara President and artistic director of the Festival, Alfio Bonaccorso executive director, e Silvia Vallinidirector of the Italian Culture Institute of Lima. Starting from the experience of the Taobuk Festival in Taormina there will be a reflection on the role of the festivals such as spaces of dialogue and comparison, capable of giving shape to a cultural vision that intertwines looks, identities and urgent themes of the present, in a cultural project that has always had a formidable international scope, while remaining rooted in its territory.
This will also be an opportunity to present the celebratory volume beyond the borders of a dream (Giulio Perrone Editore, 2025), edited by Paolo Di Paolowith unpublished contributions from Nino Rizzo Nervo, Massimo Sideri, Elvira Terranova, Matteo Collura and Antonio Spadaro. A choral book that crosses fifteen years of the festival history, including words, images and memories, through the testimonies of great narrators such as Paul Auster, Isabel Allende, Amos Oz, Ian McEwan, Elizabeth Strout, David Grossman. And Nobel Jon Fosse prizes, Annie Ernaux, Mario Vargas Llosa. The latter, who passed away this year, was the protagonist in 2020 of an out of season edition (in October) due to Covid, marked by the desire to affirm despite all the centrality of freedom and critical thinking in a dramatic and complex historical moment like that of Pandemia.
“Seeing the beautiful city of Taormina – reads a article published in El Pais and contained in the volume – without tourists is very sad. The houses seem suspended on the hills about to slide over a sea covered with clouds, hotels, bars, restaurants and shops cry bitter tears with their owners and employed on the doors with their arms folded, in the meantime that impossible customers will save them from the ruin. To this desolation there is a force of nature: Antonella Ferrara, who made the miracle possible that the international book festival, Taobuk, is celebrated once again, and with Svjatlana Aleksievič the journalist Belarusiana awarded the Nobel for literatureinvited of honor. “
To make that moment even more alive, during the meeting there will be a video extract of the interview made with the Peruvian writer for the Taobuk Award.
In the second appointment, Overcome borders. From the Apennines to Sicily (Monday 23 July, 6 pm, Italian pavilion) Antonella Ferrara, Alfio Bonaccorso and Claudio Pozzanidirector of the Genoa International Poetry Festival – Words wide open, moderate by Silvia Vallini will compare the experience of two festivals on the two sides of Italy. At the center the enhancement of diversity, multidisciplinarity, the ability to welcome figures of maximum importance in the Italian province, of combining excellence with beauty. Taormina and Genoa, respectively from fifteen and thirty -one years, tell experiences, books, ideas; generate dialogues; And they make talk about themselves by naturally connecting to the world agendas, without diverting their eyes from the most important commitment: the quality of the editorial and programmatic choices.
“It is with immense honor and profound emotion – declares Antonella Ferrara – that we participate in the International Book of the Lima book. An invitation that acquires greater value in the year in which the one hundred and fifty of diplomatic relations between Italy and Peru is celebrated. In this context of extraordinary cultural and human exchange, Taobuk presents himself with a volume that is, at the same time, a tribute to the beautiful letters and a testimony of our journey: retrace the first 15 years through the most authoritative adhesions, including those of three giants of South American literature: Luis Sepúlveda, Isabel Allende and the Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa. It is not just a tribute: it is the recognition of a deep, personal and artistic bond that these three figures have tightened with Taobuk and with me directly. They left an indelible mark and helped to define the cosmopolitan identity and the cultural profile of our festival. They were unforgettable guests, because they are connected to traveling the same journey of the soul. With the indomitable spirit of those who believe in cultural comparison as a generative energy for the future. So that there is no longer a ‘homitida Historia’, as Vargas Llosa denounced on El Pais, telling of her meeting in Taormina with the writer Belarusian dissident Svjatlana Aleksievič. Two Nobel prizes tightened in a solidarity embrace at the time of Covid. An edition, that of 2020, on which no one would have bet, and which will instead be remembered as ‘El Milagro de Taobuk’ to use the words of Vargas Llosa himself, who still fill us with pride.
We therefore go to Peru – concludes Antonella Ferrara – not only to tell who we are, but for Celebrating a true dialogue between sister cultures, united by “Latin ties”, but actually universal, which are the basis of the choice to invite Italy as a country of the guest of honor. We bring with us the dreams of written pages, living and shared memories that have crossed the Mediterranean and the ocean to become bridge between worlds. We start proud of our identity, but ready to listen, learn, welcome. To reiterate that literature unites what is far away, approaches what seems different, builds alliances. And I would like to share a certainty with Peruvian friends. And do it in my shy Spanish. Culture eg an acto de amor. Y en Lima Llegamos with El Corazón Abierto. “