‘Dissensio Arena’ is born in Pordenonelegge, a space dedicated to freedom of speech

With her memoir “A mother. The life and passion for the truth of Anna Politkovskaja” (Rizzoli), Vera – at the festival on Sunday 20 September – will pierce the veil on the very high price paid by those who do not submit to the regimes. The exiled director Zainab Entezar will instead intervene to give substance to the silent resistance of Afghan women with the volume “Fuorché il silence”, which collects 36 dramatic testimonies of Afghan women for Jouvence: she will present it at Pordenonelegge on Thursday 17 September. While the artist of Afghan origins Moshtari Hilal in his debut essay “Ugliness” (Fandango Libri) presented in Pordenonelegge will try to dismantle Ugliness, demonstrating how it is a political-economic category used by regimes to fuel hatred towards non-conforming bodies.

The president of the Pordenonelegge.it Foundation, Michelangelo Agrusti, underlines: «pordenonelegge wants to give expression and tangible content to its renewed denomination of Book and Freedom Festival, underlining the indissoluble link between writing, reading and democracy. A civil commitment that goes hand in hand with the warning of the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella, who defined reading as the true antidote against indifference and conformism.” The map of dissidence hosted in the ‘Dissensio Arena’ expands to Iran with the naturalized Dutch writer Kader Abdolah, who presents “Parla Zarathustra” (Hyperborea) in the national premiere in Pordenonelegge, fusing myth and autobiography in an epic narrative. And with the poet and activist Bita Malakuti, whose verses translated for the first time in Italy will become an explicit act of protest. The dynamics of the Middle East and North Africa are enriched by the previews of Leïla Slimani, who links her family saga to the fate of Morocco in the novel “I will bring the fire”, in its national premiere at the festival, published La nave di teseo. And by Amani El Nasif, who talks about the struggle of integration and Syria in “You are stronger than you believe”, also premiering at Pordenonelegge for Mondadori Ragazzi.

Censorship and exile also bind China and Turkey together. The Chinese author Liao Yiwu, already imprisoned for four years in his homeland after having denounced the Tiananmen massacre, shakes consciences with an essay-exposé on pandemic management in Wuhan, entitled “Wuhan” (Guerini and Associates). For his part, the Turkish-Kurdish writer Burhan Sönmez, Hemingway Prize winner 2026, puts at the center of his new novel “The Lovers of Franz K.” (Nighttime). literature as a bulwark of memory against moral oblivion. A theme, that of roots and return, also addressed by the Turkish Açelya Yönaç in “The Turkish House” (Neri Pozza) and by the Georgian Ruska Jorjoliani.

The front of hot conflicts inevitably shifts to Palestine and Ukraine. If the Algerian Amal Bouchareb evokes mourning and war in The Almond Buds, Matteo Meschiari proposes a countergeography for peace with his “Maps of Palestine” (Bollati Boringhieri), while the Israeli Assaf Gavron – a critical voice of his government – ​​intervenes with the generational novel Following the Tracks. Contemporary Ukraine, caught in a state of emergency, is instead x-rayed by the reportages of the journalist Daniel Schulz in a national preview with “I no longer hear the sirens. Ukraine: daily life and state of emergency”, a mosaic of articles that tells what remains of a country at war (Bottega Errante) and by the volume “L’album blu” by Yaryna Grusha (Bompiani), which is accompanied by reflections on the dignity of resistance by Andrea Iacomini (Unicef). Closing this journey into democratic fragilities is the investigation by journalist Tonia Mastrobuoni, “La peste” (Feltrinelli), focused on the rise of the radical right in Germany.