“For me, being here is like revenge (‘vendetta’),” said Saviano, known for his best-selling mafia exposé “Gomorrah,” which was widely translated and adapted into a film.
But despite his international reputation, Saviano was not included in Italy’s official delegation for the Frankfurt Book Fair, the world’s largest book-industry gathering. Italy is included as the Guest of Honour for this year’s fair.
Saviano instead came to Frankfurt at the invitation of his publisher.
Personal attacks by right-wing media and politicians are the order of the day in Italy, said Saviano.
He said that far-right Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni had defamed him personally by accusing him of enriching himself with his books about the Mafia.
“When a political leader says something like that, the person about whom it is said is no longer invited to festivals and publishers are afraid to publish them,” the 45-year-old writer said.
“You are a dissident if your political position causes you to have problems, if your family has problems, if you have financial difficulties,” he said.
Such a situation should not happen in a democracy, he added, but “in Italy, for some of us, it already is.”
Saviano’s talk attracted a large crowd at the book fair. He spoke at a panel organized by the writing group PEN Berlin on the subject of “Writing in illiberal times,” and also made appearances on stages organized by several German media outlets.
Since the publication of “Gomorrah” in 2006, Saviano has received death threats and is under police protection.
Before the opening of the book fair, there was an open dispute between Italian authors and representatives of Meloni’s government as to who was allowed to be part of the official delegation.
Saviano, a prominent and vehement critic of Meloni, was at the centre of the controversy.
The government was accused of excluding voices critical of it from the book fair.
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