The Israeli Embassy in Italy decided to diversify the nature of the Israeli presence at Italian book fairs, starting with one of the world’s largest and most prestigious fairs, the Salone del Libro festival in Turin, which runs from May 19-23 this year.
Among the well-known Israeli writers who have attended the fair are Etgar Keret, Assaf Gavron and David Grossman. This year, the festival will host Eshkol Nevo, whose books are translated into Italian as they are published and receive great praise. This year, Nevo has been especially prominent in Italy because an Italian adaptation of his novel, Three Floors, by Nanni Moretti, one of Italy’s leading directors, was recently released.
This time, unlike other years, the cultural department of the Israeli embassy in Rome chose to offer Italian culture lovers a slightly different experience. In addition to the meeting with Nevo, for the first time at the book fair, two documentaries about two of the most-read Israeli writers in Italy will be presented at the fair: The Fourth Window, which is about Amos Oz, and The Last Chapter of A. B. Yehoshua. Both documentaries are by Yair Qedar and he was able to get each of the authors and those close to them to open up about their work and their lives. The films will be presented with Italian translations and Qedar will attend the screenings at the nearby Museo del Cinema as part of a series of meetings with intellectuals and intellectuals. At the initiative of the Embassy, an entire evening will be dedicated to Israeli literature and documentary film. Italian readers will be able to talk to the director about the writers he knew personally, their texts and the challenge of turning a writer into a film hero.