A very different author, Jan Brokken and Felicia Kingsley, both in Piazza IX Aprile, close today the rich panorama of meetings and appointments of Taobuk 2026, which moved between the geographies of trust. Brokken is a Dutch writer and journalist who has traveled extensively in “his” Europe which he has told and by which he has been told. Brokken’s books are in themselves an immersive narrative place, a figure that returns in his latest book, “The melancholy of the traveller” (Iperborea, translated by Claudia Cozzi), which will be presented tonight at 8pm in Piazza IX Aprile as a preview in Taormina in dialogue with the journalist Giovanna Caggegi: an invitation to explore the Europe of cultures and identities, in the name of a highly cultured and clear narrative, always profoundly human, which in fourteen stories, chasing the great European culture, makes the voices of as many exiled or restless European artists throb.
As Brokken’s style is slow to travel, so effervescent is the style of Felicia Kingsley, authorial alias of the Emilian architect Serena Artioli, two souls in one body to design geometric and narrative architecture, in dialogue at 9pm in Piazza IX Aprile with the writer Lorena Spampinato. Awarded the Sicilia Prize (together with the Spaniard Eduardo Mendoza), queen of contemporary romance, what was once defined as romance literature, she had incredible success with the public with her imaginative stories. For three consecutive years she was the most read author in Italy, with over 4 million copies sold and 23 books published, translated in 20 countries.
And in the footsteps of Goethe, the Grand Tour is reborn in Taormina with the Wilhelm von Gloeden International Prize. On the 240th anniversary of Goethe’s “Journey to Italy”, the Jacques Fersen Association of which Riccardo Tomasello is president, rekindles the spirit of the Grand Tour. In the splendid historic residence of Casa Cuseni, inhabited first by the famous English painter Robert Kitson and then by his niece, the writer Daphne Phelps who dedicated one of her writings to her, the “International Wilhelm von Gloeden Prize” celebrates art and memory with the winners Giovanni Caccamo, singer-songwriter who performed on Saturday at the gala evening singing “The season of love” by Franco Battiato and received the Taobuk Award, Giuseppe Messina, Master of art and restorer of the dining room of Casa Cuseni, and Maria Attanasio, poet writer from Calabria, finalist in the twelve of the Premio Strega Narrativa with “La rosa inversa” (Sellerio 2026).
Among the Taobuk meetings, Virginia Spanò conversed with Antonio Siracusano of Gazzetta del Sud, while during “Beit La Beit. From house to house” Carmel Rosato and Shamma al Bastaki spoke with Ruggero Aricò, member of the Taobuk scientific committee.