“…in the High Imagination”,
Italy Guest of Honor at the Taipei International Book Exhibition
Eleven authors, two exhibitions and a rich cultural program to promote Italian publishing and Italian creativity in the East
Jan. 17, 2025. After recent participations in the Bucharest, Tunis, Warsaw and Frankfurt Fairs, Italy will be a guest for the first time at the 33rd Taipei International Book Exhibition (TIBE), which takes place from Tuesday, February 4 to Sunday, February 9 at the Taipei World Trade Center. Following the suggestions evoked by the theme of the Italian cultural program “…in the High Imagination” of Dantean and Calvinian memory, 11 authors from the contemporary cultural scene will open a window on Italian creativity and imagination, while narrating a selection of classics of our literature and thus giving life, meeting after meeting, to a place where a multiplicity of literary genres, perspectives and topics come together.
Made possible thanks to the support of Italian institutions – the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation with the Italian Economic, Trade and Cultural Promotion Office in Taipei, the Ministry of Culture, the ITA – Italian Trade Agency, the Centro per il libro e la lettura, which promotes the cultural program – and the collaboration of the AIE – Italian Publishers Association, which relies on Ex Libris agency, our country’s participation in TIBE offers an important opportunity to showcase and introduce a cross-section of our most contemporary culture. A new and further step to foster publishing exchange, translation and distribution of books by entering a market with significant development margins.
“Italy’s participation as Guest of Honor at TIBE 2025” says Marco Lombardi, head of the Italian Economic, Trade and Cultural Promotion Office in Taipei, “represents a great promotional opportunity for the ‘Italy System’, which continues here to gain the sympathy of the Taiwanese public. The Italy of the book will provide valuable support to all the other components of ‘Made in Italy’ which, on this occasion, will have an exceptional showcase to present themselves on this rich market. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Italian and Taiwanese organizers for their extraordinary work, which is likely to have positive spin-offs for Italy.”
Also underlining the importance of the Taiwanese appointment are the words of Innocenzo Cipolletta, President of the Italian Publishers Association: “The Italy of the book continues its path of strengthening on foreign markets by coming as Guest of Honor, after the successful participation in the Frankfurter Buchmesse, to Taipei to consolidate growth on Asian markets. Asia is the second area after Europe for the sale of translation rights abroad by Italian publishers in 2023, accounting for 15 percent of the total, up sharply from 10 percent in 2020. Chinese (traditional and simplified) is the second language we are translated into (10%) after Spanish (13%).”
Guest authors in Taipei are Beatrice Alemagna, Mario Barenghi, Gianni Biondillo, Davide Calì, Eliana Liotta, Federica Manzon, Fabiano Massimi, Susanna Mattiangeli, Lorenzo Mattotti, Laura Imai Messina and Luca Peyron. To animate their meetings, which will be held in the Italian Pavilion – set up by ITA - Italian Trade Agency and enriched by the exhibition From illustration to comics. Pencils in talented young hands, promoted by Bologna Children’s Book Fair with the collaboration of AIE – Italian Publishers Association and the bibliographical exhibition of Ibby Italia – will be a number of representatives of the cultural, institutional, publishing and academic worlds of Italy and Taiwan: Mauretta Capuano, Beni Chu, Emily Chuang, Tzu-Chun Chang, Rex How, Peini Beatrice Hsieh, Stefano Misesti and Ann-Yue Ni.
“…IN THE HIGH IMAGINATION”: THE PROGRAM
Flair, imagination, the ability to imagine and narrate worlds, people, feelings: “…in the High Imagination” the theme that identifies Italy’s Guest of Honor participation at TIBE 2025, highlights the creative process and its protagonists. Inspired by Dante’s verse “poi piovve nell’alta fantasia” quoted by Italo Calvino as an exergue to the “American lesson” on visibility, the Italian literary program wants to pay homage in Taipei to the Supreme Poet and, 40 years after his death, to the author who more than any other represents the many faces of the Italy of the book, a writer for adults and children, novelist and essayist, who worked in publishing houses and collected in a work central to our literature the fairy tales of our national tradition. A program that explores the creative paths traveled by authors and illustrators, showing through their experiences and works how creativity is a key ingredient in building a dialogue between people and cultures.
Italy thus presents itself to the Taiwanese public through the voices of a delegation of the 11 authors mentioned, in which genres and perspectives alternate and mix, 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 children’s literature. A journey through the current Italian cultural panorama that does not disregard the story of the past – but always present – sketched through a portrait of its protagonists: so in the spaces of the Italian Pavilion, Dante Alighieri, Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco, Gianna Manzini, 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. Six days of meetings, dialogues, presentations and appointments “…in the High Imagination” of yesterday and today, and an extraordinary opportunity for encounters and mutual enrichment that sees Italy take a further step at TIBE to make its publishing production even more open and international.
Alongside the authors, the protagonists of the professional program (Lorenzo Armando, Bruno Giancarli, Paola Seghi) will not be absent: they will develop topics of great interest for the sector and particularly felt in Taipei and the East, as well as offering the Fair audience an overview of the Italian market and opening the doors for a comparison with the local one, among new possibilities and emerging trends. In keeping with the theme that encompasses Italian participation, creativity will also be explored from plural and fascinating points of view, as in the format When we are all Italians, which in addition to the literary one, will allow an in-depth look at the many sectors in which Italian flair meets Eastern interest, such as design and food, among others.
THE ITALIAN PAVILION
After Poland in 2023 and the Netherlands in 2024, Italy will occupy the more than 400 square meters of the Pavilion assigned to the Guest of Honor country, one of the Areas into which the 23,450-square-meter exhibition space of the Fair, housed inside the Taipei World Trade Center, Hall 1, is divided. Inside the Italian Pavilion, set up by ITA - Italian Trade Agency and inspired by the concepts of contemporaneity, lightness and environmental sustainability, there will be a bookstore space managed by Eslite Bookstore with books by Italian authors, a children’s area and a “professional space” reserved for meetings between publishers and professional operators. Italian publishers in the B2B space will be Acoma Book | Vassena Milano Consulting, It Publishing, Kite, Daco, Erickson, Reggio Children, Tomolo Edigiò and ZOOlibri.
Also inside the Italian Pavilion, visitors will be able to admire two exhibitions: From illustration to comics. Pencils in talented young hands, curated by Giannino Stoppani Cooperativa Culturale Accademia Drosselmeier, organized by Bologna Children’s Book Fair in collaboration with AIE – Italian Publishers Association and dedicated to young talents of contemporary Italian illustration, which will be presented by Grazia Gotti on the opening day; and the bibliographic exhibition Ibby Italia Choise 2024 by Ibby Italia, in collaboration with AIE – Italian Publishers Association and Bologna Children’s Book Fair, which enhances the Honour List of the best publishing production for children in order to promote universal and democratic access to reading.
Italian Pavilion’s events program
PRESS OFFICE
Italy at Taipei International Book Exhibition
Ex Libris Comunicazione
Carmen Novella – Mob. +39 335 6792295
Italian Publishers Association
Daniela Poli – Tel. +39 02 89280823 – Mob. +39 335 1242614
