Language diversity notches up book-fest attendance

Italian-speaking readers flock to hear daring author of Mafia exposé



The 10th edition of the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival came to a close yesterday afternoon after five days of intensive book talk and personal encounters with scribes from around the world.

Reported attendance was 16,000, up nine per cent from last year.

Thanks to Roberto Saviano, a daring young man who's been dubbed the Italian answer to Salman Rushdie, attendance figures for the Italian-language events "have gone through the roof" according to founder/director Linda Leith. His two appearances, one with French simultaneous translation, the other with English, were standing-room only.

Chinese- and Arab-language events surpassed all expectations, too, she said. Spanish-language events got a boost from Alina Fernandez, Fidel Castro's Miami-based daughter. And French-language events proved more popular than ever.

"We're always trying to look after all our various communities," Leith said. Over 300 authors participated in 193 events at this year's festival.

"We're moving on many fronts here," said Leith, sounding like a seasoned military strategist. "Young people, different communities, different interests - and we're reaching them."

What Leith is happiest about this year, however, is the success of her new kidlit intiative: "We basically reached all ages this year and that's because we added the children's festival."

This wasn't a year of multiple lineups around the block for North American-recognized bestselling authors, but rather steady streams of spectators heading in various directions to discover authors from other continents. Apparently, Leith's being-all-things-to-all-cultures-and-all-ages approach works.

Of this year's authors, the one most in keeping with the Writers in Peril narrative thread of the festival was Saviano, who had three Italian-government-paid body guards protecting him.

His book Gomorrah, which has sold 1,300,000 copies in Italy and more than two million world-wide, in over 40 languages, is a scathing exposé of the Camorra, a criminal organization based in Naples.

The fact that he has received death threats indicates that the Camorra is not pleased. "It's not the author that's dangerous," Saviano told his mainly Italian-speaking audience yesterday. "It's the reader that's dangerous." He stressed that it was important that Italians around the world recognize the existence of organized crime and speak out against it before it takes root in their communities. Basically, his message is that omertà - the code of silence - has to end in order to cure the "cancer" of organized crime.

Saviano, 28, grew up in the village of Casal di Principe, the Camorra's home base. He witnessed his first killing at the age of 13 and quickly concluded that a life of crime shortens one's life expectancy.

Although the English translation of his book doesn't yet have a Canadian distributor, that's likely to change once the already-completed feature film, based on his book, is launched at the Cannes Film Festival later this month.

Other sold-out Blue Met events included interviews with Nancy Huston, Alina Fernandez and Mcgill professor Daniel Levitin, author of This is Your Brain on Music.

The 11 edition of the Blue Metropolis will take place on April 29 to May 3, 2009.