The 2021 Taobuk Award for Literary Excellence goes to the writers Olga Nawoja Tokarczuk, Emmanuel Carrère and David Grossman, and the 2021 Taobuk Award goes to the actors Claudia Gerini and Antonio Albanese: the delivery of the prestigious awards will be key, Saturday 19 June in the Ancient Theater of Taormina, of the Taobuk Gala Evening – Taormina Book Festival, the literary and cultural event conceived and directed by Antonella Ferrara, on stage from 17 to 21 June.
The public of Taobuk will then meet the three great authors in as many meetings dedicated to their books and their literary work: on the opening day of the festival, Thursday 17 June, spotlight on the imaginative literary “nomadism” of Olga Tokarczuk, and Sunday 20 June in an evening that promises to be unforgettable, meetings with David Grossman and Emmanuel Carrère will alternate.
The Gala Evening of June 19 will be dedicated to Maestro Franco Battiato: and on the stage of the Ancient Theater, thirty days after his death, one of his most beloved and iconic compositions will be raised, “La cura”, in the performance of the pianist and interpreter Giovanni Caccamo, of which Battiato himself was the real pygmalion. The artist will be accompanied by the Symphony Orchestra of the Bellini Theater in Catania. On stage, for the suggestive Taobuk Gala Evening, also the singer Simona Molinari and the étoile Sergio Bernal, former Principal Dancer of the National Ballet of Spain.
Over 200 protagonists, in Taobuk 2021, and five days of literary and cultural meetings, master classes, dialogues, scenic events and exhibition itineraries on the red thread of a theme – “Metamorphosis. Everything changes” – strongly connected to our time. Extraordinary personalities of international culture – among others, the American writer Paul Auster and the artist Michelangelo Pistoletto, the Spanish author and poet Manuel Vilas and André Aciman, American literary voice but Egyptian by birth – will alternate with many voices of authors and authors Italians, in a program that also includes the special event “Taormina reads Dante” by the Center for Book and Reading with Fabrizio Gifuni and Aldo Cazzullo. Taobuk 2021 will also host the first national meeting of the Italian mayors signatories of the Pacts for reading promoted by the Center for book and reading: the aim is the drafting of a programmatic manifesto for the promotion of the culture of the book and the definition of a unified model supporting reading.
Among the protagonists of the festival there will be, with their novelties between literature and essays, also Luciano Canfora, Gustavo Zagrebelsky, Stefania Auci, Laura Imai Messina, Marino Niola, Romana Petri, Marcello Veneziani, Innocenzo Cipolletta, Susanna Tartaro, Francesca Mannocchi, Luigi Zoja, Maurizio Ferraris.
The second edition of the International Forum dedicated to Europe is dedicated to the post-pandemic future, which Taobuk Festival hosts in Messina and Taormina from 18 to 20 June: chairs of the event by British columnist Bill Emmott with the director of the Vision think tank Francesco Grillo . The aim of the Forum is to share a “Manifesto” for the Metamorphosis of Europe, with answers, ideas, actions and good practices for the future of the continent. Among the confirmed speakers the Minister of University and Research of the Italian Government Maria Cristina Messa and Romano Prodi, former President of the European Commission and President of the Council, Mario Nava, Director General DG Reform European Commission, Antonio Parenti, Head of the Commission Representation European in Italy, Gioia Ghezzi president of EIT – European Institute of Innovation and Technology, Giuseppe Ippolito, scientific director of the National Institute for Infectious Diseases Lazzaro Spallanzani of Rome, Lucrezia Reichlin, economist of the London Business School.
In Taobuk 2021 another path dedicated to Leonardo Sciascia in the centenary of his birth, with the Impossible Conversation “One hundred years of Sciascia. Homage to the Master of Racalmuto ”, an imaginary dialogue between Luigi Pirandello and Leonardo Sciascia conceived and written by Matteo Collura, biographer of both, and with the director Fabrizio Catalano, grandson of Leonardo Sciascia, in the role of the grandfather. On the other hand, a series of appointments on the metamorphosis of medicine and “cure” is dedicated to the “Metamorphosis of medicine”, dedicated to the most relevant metamorphoses in the medical and clinical fields in light of the impact of new technologies and the evolution in the relationship between doctors and the patient. From digital technologies to artificial intelligence, to regenerative medicine: the new frontiers and new ways of “treatment”.
“Metamorphosis”, therefore, to investigate the fractures in time and space that lead to the transformation of women and men, peoples, places and creatures of the planet. But also and above all to start again: Taobuk returns to the presence, with the utmost attention to the safety of the public and an image that is reflected in the flowering of the Dandelion, transforming the yellow petals into light white fruits. The “metamorphosis of the Dandelion” is a universal “formula” of care and resilience. fascinating metaphor of the circular flow of life.
“Telling history is one thing, living it is one thing – observes the artistic director and president of Taormina Book Festival Antonella Ferrara – The theme ‘Metamorphosis. Everything changes’ requires a real-time analysis of the radical transformations taking place, which are chronicle of these years, months, days, hours. The 11th edition of the festival extends to the not exclusively humanistic sciences, advocating a Homo Novus that is confronted with new frontiers. And literature, from Ovid to today, is a master in the representation of opportunity that can arise from a profound change. The same that winds in the mystical nomadism that is the peculiar figure of the Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk, or in the mal de vivre that innervates the novels of Emmanuel Carrère. Up to the peace hoped for by David Grossman as a metamorphosis that darken the war. So let’s take the lesson of the magnificent backhoe to which this year the Taobuk Award for Literary Excellence will go “..
Widespread set of the Festival will be some of the most fascinating historic buildings in Taormina and spaces of unusual beauty, added value of each appointment. Updates and details on the taobuk.it website which will publish the program from Monday 24 May. Taobuk FestivaL is conceived and directed by Antonella Ferrara with the support of the Sicilian Region – Department of Tourism, Sport and Entertainment and the Taormina Arte Sicilia Foundation, under the High Patronage of the European Parliament and with the Patronage of Representation in Italy of the European Commission, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Ministry of Culture, and with the contribution of the Municipality of Taormina.