Our publishing house Rizzoli won the ninth edition of the Premio Strega Ragazze e Ragazzi 2024 in the 8+ category with the book “Rim and the Liberated Words” by Maddalena Vaglio Tanet.

With a story that makes us dream and reflect, the author reminds us that words are the key to freedom and awareness. “Rim and the Liberated Words” is among the top-rated books by very young readers representing the 318 schools that make up the jury.

The awards were presented this afternoon as part of “Più Libri Più Liberi,” the Fair of Small and Medium Publishers, in the Auditorium of La Nuvola, in the presence of about 1,000 primary and secondary school students from all over Italy and abroad.

The jury’s motivation: “Young Rim loves to collect words but lives in a country where words are captive and not available to everyone. There are not even schools. Words are therefore a privilege of the few and therefore not everyone can say what they think. Without words, in fact, there is no freedom of thought. Old Witzold will help Rim, through magical, fantastical and fairy-tale-like events, to recover ancient truths and, above all, to free the caged words. A compelling metaphor, as relevant as ever, for power and its abuse, the importance of language, and the utmost attention we must all pay to the free use of words and their knowledge, beginning in childhood years.”

The Electa publishing house is proposing a new project for the Electaphoto monograph series dedicated to leading contemporary photographers. Alongside the most famous names, there is also a series of little-known photographers, brought to light by careful studies with the aim of telling a ‘cultural’ story about photography in the 20^th and 21^st centuries.

The books, designed to be read and looked at, interweave text and images in a dialogue between languages, offering a new perspective on the photographers’ works and lives.

Mario Dondero (1928-2015)

Archaeologist, art historian and series editor Nunzio Giustozzi, together with Laura Strappa, curator and expert in photography and visual culture, will be the editors of the volume dedicated to internationally renowned Italian photojournalist Mario Dondero.

His monograph, divided into four sections, is distinguished by contributions from the most authoritative voices in journalism and culture, accompanied by a careful and extensive selection of photographs chosen by Dondero himself. This volume is the first comprehensive catalogue of his extraordinary work, organised chronologically and geographically to offer a visual narrative of the political, cultural and social events that shaped the ‘long’ century, chronicled through his lens.

Martha Rocher (1920-1990)

For the first time, Elisa Genovesi, an Italian researcher, and Raffaella Perna, a contemporary art historian and lecturer at the Sapienza University of Rome, will present the work of photographer and artist Martha Rocher, who interpreted the artistic and cultural panorama of 1950s Paris and 1960s Milan.

The selection of more than 250 black-and-white photographs, chosen from more than 1,600 prints kept in her private archive, depict the work and ateliers of the major exponents of the Avant-garde movements, including Yves Klein, Sonia Terk Dalaunay, Meret Oppenheim, and many others, offering an overview of the artistic climate of those years.

Giovanni Chiaramonte (1948-2023)

This series will also include the first major monograph on Giovanni Chiaramonte, the Italian photographer known for his philosophical approach, by internationally renowned Italian art historian Arturo Carlo Quintavalle in collaboration with the artist’s archives.

More than 400 selected photographs, some of his texts and an essay by Paolo Barbaro on Chiaramonte’s photographic focus on architecture have been organically arranged to make this volume complete and unique, testifying to one of the finest and most extraordinary perspectives in contemporary photography.

Its title is “HOPE”, the autobiography of Pope Francis, the first in history to be written by a pope, and it will appear simultaneously worldwide in principal languages and in over 80 countries next January. The announcement of the event took place today at the Frankfurt Book Fair by Mondadori, which manages world rights.

“The book of my life is the story of a journey of hope, a journey that I cannot separate from the journey of my family, of my people, of all God’s people. In every page, in every passage, it is also the book of those who have traveled with me, of those who came before, of those who will follow,” comments Pope Francis in the note that announces the publication of the book. “An autobiography is not our own private story, but rather the baggage we carry with us. And memory is not just what we recall, but what surrounds us. It doesn’t speak only about what has been, but about what will be. It seems like yesterday, and yet it’s tomorrow. All is born to blossom in an eternal springtime. In the end, we will say only: I don’t recall anything in which You are not there.”

With a wealth of revelations and unpublished stories, moving and very human, poignant and dramatic, but also capable of real humor, Francis’s memoir starts off in the early years of the twentieth century with the story of his Italian roots and his ancestors’ adventure of emigration to Latin America, moving on to his childhood, adolescence, choice of vocation, adult life, covering the whole of his papacy up to the present day. A text of great narrative force in which the Pope through his autobiographical account addresses candidly, courageously and prophetically some of the most important and controversial questions of our current times, as well as the crucial moments of his service as universal pastor of the Church.

Written with Carlo Musso, former non-fiction editorial director of Piemme and Sperling & Kupfer, and then founder of the independent publisher Libreria Pienogiorno, in accordance with the wishes of Pope Francis this exceptional document was originally intended to be published after his death, but the new Jubilee of Hope announced for 2025, and the needs of our times, have moved him to make this precious legacy available now. “It has been a long, intense adventure that has taken up the past six years: work on writing it began in March 2019 and will be completed in the forthcoming weeks,” Musso comments.

The book, destined to fascinate readers throughout the world and to represent a legacy of hope for future generations, is enhanced by some remarkable photographs, including private and unpublished material made personally available by the Pope himself.

These are the publishers now involved in the publication: Italy Mondadori, USA Random House, UK Viking, Canada Penguin Random House, France Albin Michel, Germany Penguin Random House / Kösel-Verlag, Spain Penguin Random House, Portugal Penguin Random House, Brazil Companhia das letras, Croatia Znanje, Slovakia Ikar, Hungary Kossuth Kiado, Romania Polirom, Greece Gutenberg Dardanos, Korea Catholic Publishing House, Catalonia Penguin Random House / Rosa del vents, Poland Swiat Ksiazki, Lithuania Lithuanian Writers Union, Czechia Euromedia.

The exhibition “Impression, Morisot” is the first major exhibition in Italy dedicated to Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) held at the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa from 12 October 2024 to 23 February 2025.

Press Preview Thursday 10 October 2024 at 11.30 am. The exhibition is part of the calendar of official celebrations to mark the 150 th anniversary of Impressionism, included in the commemorative season initiated by the Museo d’Orsay in Paris, organised in collaboration with the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nice and with unpublished works from the heirs of Berthe Morisot.

The exhibition is a project by the Palazzo Ducale Fondazione per la Cultura and Electa, who is also a publisher of the catalogue, supported by the Liguria Region and Genoa City Council, with the patronage of the French Embassy, and is curated by Marianne Mathieu, one of the most renowned experts on Berthe Morisot’s work and a scholar of the history of Impressionism, and protagonist of many scientific discoveries in this field.

More than 80 works, including paintings, etchings, watercolours and pastels, plus photographic and archive documents, many of which have never been seen before, provide an insight into the life of the artist, who managed to reconcile family life and an artistic career, and entertained fruitful relations not only with the greatest artists of the time such as Renoir, Monet, Manet and Degas, but also with intellectual figures such as Mallarmé and Zola. The exhibition features scientific innovations related to her stays on the Riviera between 1881-1882 and 1888-1889 and the influence of the Mediterranean light on her work.

From October 16-20, 2024, the Mondadori Group will participate in the 76th edition of the Frankfurt Book Fair, where Italy will be Guest of Honor for the first time in 36 years. This prestigious event represents an important showcase for Italian publishing, with more than 230 publishing houses and literary agents involved. We will be present with our publishing houses and several leading authors in Hall 5.0, together with other important compatriot publishers and the Italian Collective Stand organized by ICE-Agenzia in collaboration with the Italian Publishers Association (AIE).

The space dedicated to Italian publishers, which this year reaches record dimensions with 668 square meters and 131 exhibitors, will be inaugurated on Oct. 16 at 10:30 a.m. in the presence of the Italian and German Ministers of Culture, Alessandro Giuli and Claudia Roth, together with the Italian Ambassador to Germany Armando Varricchio, ICE-Agenzia Director General Lorenzo Galanti, AIE President Innocenzo Cipolletta and fair director Juergen Boos.

The Frankfurter Buchmesse program includes a packed schedule of meetings and round tables involving all professionals in the publishing supply chain. The Mondadori Group’s participation in this important event represents a unique opportunity to strengthen the international presence of its authors and promote the quality and diversity of Italian publishing production.

Here is the full program of Italy Guest of Honor 2024

Mondadori Group publishing houses at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2024

During the fair, the Group’s leading publishing houses, including Mondadori, Einaudi, Rizzoli, Piemme, Sperling & Kupfer, De Agostini, Star Comics and Mondadori Electa, will be present with meetings and appointments. New publishing titles will be presented and internationally established authors will be promoted, as well as new emerging voices.

The presence at Buchmesse is a tangible sign of the Mondadori Group’s ongoing commitment to enhancing Italian creativity and literature globally. With the support of ICE and AIE, dialogue is promoted among industry professionals from around the world to help consolidate Italy’s position as a leading player in the international publishing scene.

“AIE has promoted a program of professional meetings that gives voice to the entire book supply chain, recounts its excellence, and confronts great international professionals: Italia Ospite d’Onore will thus be the story of the authors who make Italian literature known abroad, but also the story of a strong, innovative and future-oriented industry that works on technological frontiers and questions the changes our profession faces, in a continuous dialogue with the rest of the world.” Innocenzo Cipolletta, President of AIE.

Milan celebrates Enrico Baj (Milan, 31 October 1924 – Vergiate, 16 June 2003), one of the masters of the Italian and international neo-avant-garde, with a large retrospective as one of the protagonists of the autumn exhibitions, designed to revisit all the themes and subjects of his long and multifaceted career. Baj returns to Palazzo Reale in the Sala delle Cariatidi, exactly one hundred years after his birth and twelve years after the exhibition I Funerali dell’anarchico Pinelli, in the same room, and which, for the first time, will be integrated into an anthological itinerary and in close dialogue with other works by the master.

Promoted by the Comune di Milano-Cultura and produced by Palazzo Reale with Electa, the project is curated by Chiara Gatti and Roberta Cerini Baj and features almost fifty works spanning a time period from the early 1950s to the dawn of the 2000s, covering the artist’s phases of research and involvement with different movements over time: from the recovery of the Dada movement and Surrealism to the modes of Informal art, from the proximity to the Nordic CoBrA group to the genesis of the Nuclear art movement, which Baj founded in Milan with Sergio Dangelo in 1951. Starting from the gestural abstraction of his beginnings, passing through the birth of his larval anthropomorphic figures and the eruption of the liquefied mountains in the magmatic body of the Generals, the exhibition will touch on the parody of extraterrestrial invasions to arrive at the Meccano army and the animated world of chests of drawers and trumeaus.

His characters, which have entered popular imagination, Dames and Generals, Ultrabodies, Mirrors, Furniture and the monsters of the Apocalypse will animate a carousel of creatures from the surrealist and sci-fi universe of an artist who used irony and the grotesque as a tool to dismantle bourgeois conformism and take a stand against all forms of established power.

His famous aesthetics of trinkets and trimmings, of tassels and shiny buttons like insignia on the truncated chests of his emblazoned soldiers, will be the thread that will stitch together, in sections, the enormous themes of Baj’s poetics, freed from a rigid chronological sequence or genre, with continuous cross-references between art and literature, colours and words, following a sort of script that will suggest a theatrical time and space to the spectator, given even the setting.

Mondadori Group, Italy’s largest book publisher, presents Audiobooks in the Dark, a sensory journey dedicated to the accessibility and inclusiveness of audio storytelling.

The initiative, which will take place on Monday 23 September at Fondazione Istituto dei Ciechi in Milan, Via Vivaio 7, aims to raise awareness of the importance of universal, inclusive access to culture and reading through the potential of audio books.

Participants will experience an immersive journey developed in collaboration with the Foundation, in which listening will be the key feature.

The event is dedicated to audiobook listeners of all ages, but also to enthusiasts, people curious to experience this type of reading and anyone who loves stories and wants to discover a new way to access them.

Event Schedule

‘Audiobooks in the Dark’ will be held in three sessions on Monday 23 September at 3 pm, 5 pm and 7 pm.
Each session will begin with a talk on audiobooks by special guests, including Chiara Anicito — a writer, content creator and reader of audiobooks by Cristina Cassar Scalia (Einaudi author) — and Martina Levato — a content creator and audiobook voice who will present a preview of the audiobook of The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (Mondadori).
Linus, a radio presenter and voice of the audiobook What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Murakami Haruki (Einaudi), will also be present at the 3 pm and 5 pm talks.
The meeting will be moderated by Alessandro Barbaglia, an author, podcaster and audiobook narrator. Barbaglia is one of the authors of the Ossigeno series by Mondadori Ragazzi, which offers a series of highly readable stories for middle school children accustomed to quick forms of narration, from social media to video games to TV series. In their audiobook format, the titles in the series acquire an additional level of accessibility, so that everyone can enjoy them.

At the end of the event, participants will be guided through the unique experience of Dialogue in the Dark, presented by the Fondazione Istituto dei Ciechi. In this unique opportunity, people can experience how they can interact with the world around them without sight, deepening the crucial role of the senses in everyday experience.

Participation is free of charge: booking is necessary via the website EventBrite. Places at each session are limited.

Link to Dialogue in the Dark
https://www.dialogonelbuio.org/index.php/it/il-percorso

It was announced today that the Prix Versailles selection committee has included the two Electa bookshops in the Colosseum on its 2024 List of the World’s Most Beautiful Emporiums.

The Prix Versailles, a world prize for architecture and design, awards contemporary achievements that make an exceptional mark on everyday life. The selection criteria include innovation, creativity, the local heritage and eco-sustainability.

Following this initial selection, the Electa bookshops in the Colosseum will compete for one of three 2024 World Titles (Prix Versailles, Mention Intérieur, Mention Extérieur), which will be announced on 2 December at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

The refurbishment of the Colosseum bookshop in May 2022 is part of an overall plan to modernise the network of four bookshops run by Electa in the Colosseum Archaeological Park. The project covered both the furnishings and graphics as well as the product selection: publishing and merchandising with dual copyrights — Electa and the Colosseum Archaeological Park — to provide the public with tools for orientation and understanding, as well as souvenirs marked by graphical care, quality materials and eco-sustainability of the raw materials and production chain.

The design of the bookshops in the Colosseum Archaeological Park was entrusted to Studio Migliore+Servetto, who developed a new format with Electa.

The different areas of intervention are united by a lightweight design for the furnishings, a selection of very light tones and the transparency of specifically designed micro-perforated sheets. These unifying elements are varied in each bookshop with specific colours (red, yellow) and differing graphics designed by Leonardo Sonnoli Irene Bacchi Studio Sonnoli.

Bookcases are used as an effective display system: they are flexible, capable of accommodating the different room sizes and their specific commercial requirements, and they highlight the richness of the contents and different types of merchandise.

The spaces are conceived as a contemporary Wunderkammer. A repeating module is the ‘frame’, which symbolically works around the merchandise on display. Visitors are surrounded by designer objects, articles bearing the Park brand name, books and products that, through the rhythm of the display and the graphic apparatus denoting the spaces, compose a narrative that arouses curiosity and a desire to learn about the monument and its history.

Tony Blair’s On Leadership, François Furet’s The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century and Voltaire’s Letters on the English are the first three releases of the new publishing house.

Tony Blair’s On Leadership is part of the Libera series dedicated to works that discuss current affairs. Furet’s The Passing of an Illusion and Voltaire’s Letters on the English, translated into Italian for the first time by Antonio Gurrado, were conceived in the Biblioteca series, focusing on great classics that have stood the test of time.

How can we set priorities and deal with crises? How can we balance short-term victories with long-term structural changes? What is the best way to attract investment, to reform healthcare or education, and to ensure public safety? These are just some of the most significant questions that constitute the cornerstone of Tony Blair’s essay on the art of governing. The former British prime minister draws on more than a decade of experience in government, refusing to avoid the major issues that are still unresolved on the world stage and must be tackled head-on in order to assist the leaders of our time. The author’s track record, his commitment to supporting developing countries, working for peace in the Middle East and combating extremism have provided him with the tools to make a lucid and disenchanted judgement on today’s political situation. Never before has the quality of a nation’s government been as crucial to its success as it is today. There are countries that have the same population, similar resources and the same growth potential, yet some perform well, while others implode: the nature of leadership therefore becomes a decisive factor between growing and struggling states.

In On Leadership, technology is a voice in its own right, which is not considered one of the phenomena that leaders must manage, but rather the “epochal transformation” that affects all governments, which requires a decision on which side to take and whether to harbour outdated prejudices or to be open to change, first and foremost of ourselves. In chapter 19, we read: [generative AI represents] a radical alteration of the fundamental principles on which [the system] is based.” According to Blair, the technological revolution “makes it possible to implement measures that have real consequences in a reasonably short period of time – within an election cycle”, as “artificial intelligence is the only realistic way to improve productivity in the private sector [and] in the public service.” At the same time, Blair wants to emphasise that “it is up to each leader to decide how they want to use this all-encompassing revolution.”

On the historical front, the Biblioteca series features the figure of François Furet, known for his seminal works on the French Revolution and Communism, and for having directed the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris during his long career. The historian, in his work The Passing of an Illusion, edited by Marina Valensise, discusses the communist idea by analysing the difficult relationship between the expectations raised in terms of socio-economic conditions and what was achieved until the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. The author clarifies this paradox by pointing out as a hallmark of Leninism “the idea that old Russia, fresh out of Czarism, invents a social and political regime that can and should serve as an example to Europe and the whole world, placing itself moreover in continuity with the history of the West.” This claim nurtured by the Bolsheviks from 1918 onwards is still echoed in Furet’s words: “illusion does not <accompany> communist history: it is constitutive of it.” The denial of the facts makes “the story of the illusion of communism” even more compelling. This is the theme of the book and not the history of communism, as the author seeks to emphasize in the preface.

Also included in the Biblioteca series, Voltaire’s Letters on the English (Italian edition edited by Antonio Gurrado) is a highly topical work despite the different scenario that accompanied its inception.  Voltaire’s focus is the theme of overcoming the logic of feudal government to arrive at a more liberated society, free of superstition and passionate about scientific knowledge. The pivotal theme underlying the publisher’s approach, namely freedom, therefore returns, contextualising Letters on the English in the most suitable cultural context for its enhancement.
In its attack on religious and political intolerance and, at the same time, in its defence of empirical thinking and the experimental method, Letters on the English, originally written in England between 1727 and 1728 and published in London in August 1733, constitutes one of the very first expressions of Enlightenment thought, a manifesto of the values that shaped the emergence of 18th-century culture. It is no coincidence that Oliver Goldsmith, the Irish writer and playwright, described Voltaire as “the poet and philosopher of Europe”.
The work, translated for the first time directly from the original written almost entirely in English, is presented to the public in the knowledge that Voltaire decided to spend two years in England in order to become an English author, with a plan that therefore went beyond the motivations of mere travel.
At the same time, Voltaire was also a pioneer in terms of knowledge dissemination, since he was one of the first to successfully convey the ideas of English philosophers to the general public.
For these reasons, Letters on the English undoubtedly ranked among the best-selling 18th-century books in the British Isles: fourteen more editions were published over the course of the century.
Voltaire therefore managed to establish himself not ‘in spite of’ having written in a foreign language, but ‘because’ he had written in a foreign language such as English “the language of a free nation […] the only one that could express with vigour what I could only sketch faintly in my native tongue.”

Reading is a journey that leads us to discover new worlds, different cultures and, most importantly, ourselves. What better time to indulge in this practice than during the summer?

Why is summer reading so special?

With its long days and more relaxed pace, summer offers the ideal time and attitude for reading. Without the hustle and bustle of everyday life, we can finally indulge in the pleasure of leafing through a book, letting ourselves be captivated by the stories and losing ourselves in the words. Reading during the summer helps us expand our horizons, stimulating our imagination, keeping our minds exercised and reducing stress.

Here are our recommendations for holiday reading

Whatever your destination, we thought we’d offer you a collection of books selected from the most read and appreciated titles of our publishing houses (Battello a vapore, De Agostini, Einaudi, Electa, Mondadori, Mondadori Electa, Mondadori Children’s Books, Piemme, Rizzoli and Sperling & Kupfer, Star Comics and Utet), designed to satisfy readers of all ages.