Organized in collaboration with Edizioni E/O, the CaLibro Africa Festival running until October 1st in Città di Castello will feature some of the continent’s best writers
There will be the Goncourt Prize winner Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, but also the Italian-Somali Igiaba Scego, candidate for this year’s Strega. And many other African writers at the tenth edition of CaLibro Africa Festival scheduled from Thursday 28 September to Sunday 1 October in Città di Castello, Umbria. The event is organized in collaboration with Edizioni E/O, which in recent years has published some of the most interesting contemporary African authors, from Chinua Achebe, Abasse Ndione and Ahmadou Kourouma, to the more recent Damon Galgut and Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, author, this the last of the extraordinary novel The most hidden memory of men which in 2021 earned him the Goncourt. Edizioni E/O has also recently published by the same author The silence of the choir, a truth novel set in Sicily, where the author personally experienced the experience of the Salesian association Don Bosco 2000 which welcomes migrants who have landed on the island and accompanies them during the long wait for their documents. The result is an exciting and tragic story in which stories of migrants, volunteers and politicians meet and clash, poised between acceptance and intolerance, but without falling into the Manichean trap of dividing and pitting good and bad.
African literatures are finally establishing themselves on the world stage, and the prestigious awards received in 2021 by three African writers – the Nobel to the Tanzanian Abdulrazak Gurnah, the Goncourt to the Senegalese Sarr and the Booker Prize to the South African Damon Galgut – are just an example of the recognitions that attest, albeit with serious delay, to this vitality.
«And yet – say the organizers – all this is not enough: there is still a need to present African writers to the Italian public, and to do it more and better. This is why CaLibro Africa Festival comes to life: an opportunity to meet readers, a moment of discussion and presentation of various writers of African origin to the public of our country.”
One of these, Igiaba Scego, has now established herself in the Italian literary panorama with her novels which are placed within the increasingly multi-ethnic, multicultural and multi-religious reality of our country, but which also open onto broader horizons, as does her latest book, Cassandra in Mogadishu (Bom-plans, 2023). Through his family history, Scego brings out all the demons of both the Italian colonial affair, but also of the destructive madness that has taken possession of Somalia. With Chiara Piaggio, who will also be present at the CaLibro Festival, he also edited the collection African. Talking about the continent beyond stereotypes (Feltrinelli, 2021), which is, in turn, a journey through the literature of contemporary Africa: a plural journey as will the voices of the authors who will participate in the Città di Castello Festival. Among these, Damon Galgut, author of numerous novels translated into Italian, such as The promise (Edizioni E/O, 2021), a family story that reflects the atmosphere of resentment, renewal and ultimately hope that characterize post-apartheid South Africa. In Città di Castello there will also be the Tunisian Amira Ghenim, author of The house of notables (Edizioni E/O), a complex saga involving a large and rich family from Tunis, tormented by a scandal and much hypocrisy; the Nigerian Cheluchi Onyemelukwe Onuobia, of whom E/O published in Italian Two lives, two women; but also the Cameroonian Eugène Ebodé, unfortunately not yet translated into our country.
«CaLibro Festival – explain the organizers – was promoted by the cultural association Il Fondino, founded in Città di Castello in 2005 by a group of friends who initially were just looking for a place to spend their evenings together in the province. Then – they joke – things got out of hand and in recent years the group has created more than sixty initiatives aimed at the city, in the cultural and civic engagement fields, with particular attention to local networks”.
After the limitations due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the tenth edition presents itself as a truly special and original event, precisely because of this opening to the world of African literature, still little known in Italy, but also very underestimated. The Festival includes, in addition to meetings with the authors, concerts, screenings and other events. Full program on: www.calibrofestival.com