Books

Today, Alice Cairati takes up the position of Communications and Promotion Manager of the Piemme, Sperling & Kupfer and Electa publishing houses, reporting directly to General Manager Stefano Peccatori.

Born in Milan in 1984, she graduated from the University of Milan with honours in Philosophical Sciences. Cairati began her professional career with the Mondadori Group 13 years ago, at the Mondadori Electa publishing house. After three years of experience in marketing, she shifted to communications and events in 2014, before becoming Communications Manager for the Varia line of Mondadori Electa, Sperling & Kupfer, Piemme in 2019.

The new communications structure entrusted to Alice Cairati was designed to develop integrated communication plans, in which the press office, digital communications and promotion are coordinated strategically and effectively. In this respect, Cetta Leonardi is head of the Radio and TV Press and Promotion Office, Alessandro Ventura is head of the Digital Communications and Promotion Office, while Cairati remains responsible for the Events Office.

Milan is celebrating Enrico Baj (Milan, 31 October 1924 – Vergiate, 16 June 2003), a master of the Italian and international neo-avant-garde, with an extensive retrospective that will stand out among exhibitions this autumn, as it is designed to cover all the topics and subjects of his long and multifaceted experience.

Baj returns to Sala delle Cariatidi in Palazzo Reale exactly a hundred years after his birth and twelve years after the exhibition I Funerali dell’anarchico Pinelli (The Funerals of the Anarchist Pinelli) was held in the same room. For the first time, this exhibition will be integrated in an anthological itinerary and a timely dialogue with other works by the master.

Promoted by the Municipality of Milan – Culture and produced by Palazzo Reale with Electa, the project is curated by Chiara Gatti and Roberta Cerini Baj and includes nearly fifty works distilled in a time span ranging from the early 1950s to the dawn of 2000. It crosses the artist’s research phases and his adherence to different movements over time: from the revival of Dadaism and Surrealism to the modes of Informal art, from his closeness to the Nordic CoBrA 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 touches on the parody of extraterrestrial invasions, reaching the Meccano army and the animated world of chests of drawers and trumeaux.

His characters that have become part of the common imagination — the Ladies and Generals, the Ultrabodies, the Mirrors, the Furniture and the Monsters of the Apocalypse — will animate a flurry of creatures from the surrealist and sci-fi universe of an artist who made irony and the grotesque a picklock for dismantling bourgeois conformism and taking sides against all forms of consolidated power.

His celebrated aesthetics of trinkets and trimmings, tassels and shiny buttons like insignia on the truncated chests of his emblazoned soldiers, is a thread that stitches together sections of the broadest themes of Baj’s poetics, freed from a rigid chronological sequence or genre classification, with continuous cross-references between art and literature, colours and words, following a sort of script that, also in the setting, suggests a theatrical time and space for observers.

From 16 July to 13 September 2024, in anticipation of the major retrospective at Palazzo Reale, the Museum of Natural History on Corso Venezia will also host a tribute dedicated to by the artist’s engravings and books, in which Enrico Baj classified the natural world with irony and imagination. Under the title Enrico Baj. Zoologia fantastica e altre nature (Fantastic Zoology and Other Natures) will feature 22 panels divided among the Manuale di zoologia fantastica (Manual of Fantastic Zoology), Paradiso perduto (Paradise Lost), the folder I Fiori (The Flowers, with its visionary botany), as well as etchings from the famous De Rerum Natura of 1958, a homage (reinvented) to Lucretius’ Latin poem.

BAJ. BajchezBaj is also in Savona and Albissola Marina.
The unique catalogue published by Electa

To mark the centenary of the Milanese artist’s birth, an exhibition curated by Luca Bochicchio and dedicated to Baj’s ceramic work in all its historical and chronological development opens on 8 October. Entitled BAJ. Baj chez Baj will open at the Ceramics Museum in Savona, with a section also at MuDA – Museo Diffuso Albisola in Albissola Marina, in the exhibition centre and Casa Museo Jorn. The scientific collaboration between Milan and Savona, among curators and institutions, aims to outline two independent yet complementary itineraries paying homage to Baj’s eclectic genius. This is documented in the single catalogue published by Electa, in which the two exhibition itineraries unravel between places, forms, materials and encounters, tracing Baj’s fascinating cosmogony, an epiphany of intelligence and creativity.

Baj will also become a topic in Electa’s A-Z series, an array of monographic titles on eclectic 20th-century figures.

Debuting on 5 September with an essay by Tony Blair on the art of governing is the new Silvio Berlusconi Editore, a publishing house founded by Mondadori Group with the purpose of focusing on liberal and democratic thought.

‘Silvio Berlusconi Editore,’ explains Marina Berlusconi, President of the Group ,‘will have a very precise objective: fighting for the concept of freedom and giving a voice to its broadest variations, while remaining absolutely separate from any form of political militancy. We decided to name this new publishing house after my father, Silvio Berlusconi, because his projects, his achievements, his life were founded on freedom. With no compromises. Talking about freedom today is more important than ever. Our society, Western society, appears increasingly threatened: wars, strengthening autocratic regimes, and the aversion that not a few of us show for the values our history was built on, starting with the most precious asset we have, freedom. An asset that we now see called into question.

Series

The publishing house will release a limited number of titles each year, divided into two series. The first, ‘Biblioteca’, will collect important books to be published or republished, translated for the first time or translated again, but classic books nevertheless, either already recognised or destined to become so. ‘Libera’, the second series, is dedicated to contemporary authors tackling open questions on current events. In fact, the publisher aims to alternate past and present beyond any scheme, while focusing on both literature and non-fiction, Italian and foreign authors.

Titles Being Released

With On Leadership. Lessons for the 21st Century, Tony Blair has written a manual for ‘an art of good governance’ that he wished he had known when he began his long political career. A synthesis of lessons in leadership from years of experience at the top of a large, long-standing liberal democracy.

A work that answers some fundamental questions: How can we prioritise 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 citizen safety? And what should governments do to take advantage of the enormous opportunities of the 21st-century technological revolution? A decade at the helm of the United Kingdom, a commitment to supporting developing countries, working for peace in the Middle East and the fight against extremism have given Tony Blair the tools to judge today’s political situation clearly, immersing himself in various and often conflicting settings and scenarios.

Together with the release of On Leadership, two classics published in the ‘Biblioteca’ series enhance the Silvio Berlusconi Editore line. Voltaire’s Letters on the English, a work written in 1727 and 1728, during the author’s stay in England, recounts the political model of the parliamentary monarchy, religious tolerance, and the dynamism of a society in which scientists and men of culture played a fundamental role, in contrast to the tyrannical French feudal model. In this edition, the French philosopher’s classic is translated for the first time from English, the language in which it was written almost in its entirety.

The classics in the ‘Biblioteca’ series also include The Passing of an Illusion by François Furet, a historian known for his studies on the French Revolution and long-time director of the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. This is a fundamental work of 20th-century history that seeks to understand the influence that communist ideas long exerted on Western intellectuals, despite the tragic experiences that marked it, first in the USSR, and then in other countries.

2025

With his eyes on Russia, more modern this time, Alexander Baunov, a philologist of antiquity, has written The End of the Regime, a book that has become a bestseller in his homeland as a symbol of resistance to Putin. The first translation in the world will be published in 2025 by Silvio Berlusconi Editore in the ‘Libera’ series.  The work focuses on an analysis of the fall of the regimes of Francisco Franco in Spain, António Salazar in Portugal and the colonels in Greece, capturing moments in the transition from dictatorship to democracy. Without ever explicitly mentioning them, analogies with the contemporary history of Putin’s Russia, are the key to grasping the different historical frameworks analysed by Baunov.

Also coming out in bookshops in 2025 is I giorni contati, a new essay by Ernesto Galli della Loggia in the ‘Libera’ series. Without making allowances, the historian and editor of ‘Corriere della Sera’ addresses the state of Western civilisation, which is denying its roots and no longer seems to remember its values. Rather than inviting us to feel sorry for ourselves, the diagnosis is a combative call to resistance, a reprimand to remember who we are and fight for our existence.

In 2025, the ‘Libera’ series will also publish Ragazzi di carta velina by Walter Siti, editor of the works by Pier Paolo Pasolini and winner of the Strega Prize in 2013 with Resistere non serve a niente. The great writer reflects on the fragility of children, making it an interpretative paradigm that runs through many of the changes taking place in our society. In his analysis, Siti chooses the language of the latest generation as a starting point to understand the dynamics of a social context in which no one wants to offend and everyone considers themselves a victim.

Finally, Bourgeois Virtues, Bourgeois Dignity and Bourgeois Equality are the titles of Deirdre N. McCloskey’s ‘Bourgeois Trilogy’, which will be published in the Silvio Berlusconi Editore ‘Biblioteca’ series next year. The author, a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington D.C. and Professor Emerita at the University of Illinois Chicago, aims to show that capitalism and bourgeois values are a pillar of social, economic and cultural progress, in contrast to certain prejudices that persist in the public debate.

Starting on 26 June 2024, www.silvioberlusconieditore.it will be online with the first previews.

The Mondadori Group participates in the celebration of love in all its forms and nuances through some of the most interesting and representative books published by our publishing houses, dealing with themes such as diversity.

In our Group, we strive every day to build a more inclusive world where everyone can feel loved and accepted. So this month, through the power of words, writing and reading, we want to promote stories that speak a universal language: the language of love.

Electa will be present at the 60^th International Art Exhibition with dedicated publishing offers and updated layouts for its bookshops at the Venice Biennale.

At the bookshop: selected spaces, objects and books

The bookshop at the Arsenale Corderie (project by Migliore + Servetto Architects, 2022), also coordinated with the bookshop at the Giardini della Biennale, will have a new identity thanks to the graphic project by the Sonnoli studio to enhance the Biennale’s historical posters, drawn from the Biennale Library – ASAC.
In the same spaces, Electa will be presenting six official merchandising lines, including institutional ones curated by Studio De Valence and Marco Camuffo, plus the line of novelties designed for this edition by the Brazilian studio Campo.

Maintaining a focus on reading, Electa has also worked on an ‘author’s’ selection of titles. In fact, part of the titles at the bookshops were entrusted to an external ‘search’, presenting an unprecedented slant on the many themes of contemporary culture suggested by the exhibition. Anna Toscano, a writer, photographer and journalist who teaches Italian at Ca’ Foscari and other universities, seized the challenge to cross the threads connected with Adriano Pedrosa’s Biennale Arte 2024, developing a selection of around 300 titles in Italian and English, ranging from novels to essays to poetry.
Philosophical books, anthropological essays, comic books, photobooks, anthologies and short stories were identified and listed under four keywords, four suggestions that run through their contents and trace their trajectory.

Geography, with themes related in different ways and forms to migration, decolonisation, travelling and movement, and thus to people, bodies, language and anthropology;
Language, with titles that explore language in the broadest sense of the term;
People incorporates the concept of individuals and collectivity and traces a path through identity, gender, bodies, activism, migration, ideas, feminism, anthropology, philosophy and decolonisation;
Venice is a tribute that includes texts for leaving the stereotypical image of the Lagoon and entering an awareness of what the city of the Biennale has been, what it is and what it can become.

The four themes, however, intentionally represent a non-categorical selection, in which the boundary between topics can be ‘disputed’ and a book can find a place in the ‘word’ next to it. As with genres, this bibliography is in fact designed to elide or shift the boundary between literary genres: poetry sometimes tends to prose and prose to non-fiction, which can also cross over into poetry or philosophy. There are no limits to this division. Indeed it is a sharing of words without borders, because “when we all recognise ourselves as foreigners”, as Julia Kristeva writes, borders no longer have any reason to exist.

The range of books is completed with the catalogues of the Pavilions and Country Participations, illustrated volumes on the artists present in the International Exhibition, new publications on art/photography/fashion/graphic design, art commentary and focuses on refugee artists and writers.

The Electa catalogues for the Art Biennale 2024

For the 60^th Venice Biennale, Electa is publishing Due qui/To Hear, the guide to the Italian Pavilion, edited by Luca Cerizza and designed by Studio Folder, presenting the project by Massimo Bartolini in collaboration with Caterina Barbieri, Gavin Bryars and Kali Malone.

Among other Electa publications for the 60^th International Art Exhibition, we would like to mention the catalogue of the Saudi Arabian National Pavilion, curated by Maya El Khalil and Jessica Cerasi, where Manal Aldowayanis exhibiting the work Shifting Sands: A Battle Song, and the book H2O Venezia: Diari d’Acqua – Water Diaries, curated by Mara Hofmann, the catalogue of a collective exhibition resulting from a residency programme for women artists who worked on a visual narrative about Venice.

Parallel to the 60th Venice Biennale, the exhibition Uzbekistan: Avant-Garde in the Desert. The Form and the Symbol, curated by Silvia Burini and Giuseppe Barbieri and promoted and supported by the Foundation for the Development of Art and Culture of Uzbekistan, is opening at Ca’ Foscari University. This exhibition introduces the Italian and international public to a little-known page of artistic history in the first half of the 20th century. It presents over 100 works from the Tashkent Museum and the Nukus Museum, long described as the ‘Louvre of the Desert’, highlighting the connection between the Russian Avant-Garde and Central Asian art. Electa Catologue (Italian and English editions).

Also available at Electa bookshops is the Guide to the Pavilions of the Venice Biennale since 1877, in Italian and English editions, edited by Marco Mulazzani.

Knopf publishing house has announced the publication of Alexei Navalny’s memoir, Patriot. The book will be released on 22 October and published in Italy by Mondadori.

Navalny started writing Patriot in 2020, shortly after he was poisoned. The book tells the whole story of his life: his youth, the time he felt the need to devote himself to activism, his marriage and family, his commitment to democracy, and freedom in Russia, which saw him stand up to a world superpower determined to silence him. Navalny was convinced that change could not be resisted, that change will come eventually, and these pages clearly express his message.

With a wealth of gripping details, including unpublished letters from prison, Navalny recounts his political career, the various attempts on his life and the lives of those closest to him, as well as the relentless campaign he and his team waged against an increasingly dictatorial regime.

Navalny’s widow, Julija Navalnaya, comments, «This book is a testimony not only to Alexei’s life, but also to his unwavering commitment to the fight against dictatorship, a fight for which he sacrificed everything, including his life. In these pages, readers will come to know the man I loved deeply, a man of absolute integrity and courage. Telling his life story is a way of honouring his memory and inspiring others to fight for what is right and to never lose sight of the values that really matter».

Written with the passion, acumen, candour and courage for which Navalny was rightly acclaimed, Patriot is his last letter to the world, a touching account of the last years he spent in the world’s most brutal prison, a reminder of why the principles of individual freedom are inalienable, a pressing exhortation to continue the work for which he gave his life.

The book is being published worldwide and will be released in hardback, e-book and audio book editions. The global release date is 22 October 2024. In the US, the first print run is 500,000 copies.

The Mondadori Group reports today that it has signed an agreement for the acquisition by the subsidiary Rizzoli International Publications Inc. of 100% of the share capital of Chelsea Green Publishing Company. Founded 40 years ago by Ian and Margo Baldwin, the publisher is based in Vermont (USA) and in the UK through its subsidiary Chelsea Green Publishing UK Ltd. Its editorial focus is sustainability – particularly green, health and wellness issues – and promoting cultural diversity.

The Mondadori Group already has a presence in the United States through its subsidiary Rizzoli International Publications Inc., a leading publisher of illustrated English-language books on Lifestyle and Interior Design, which has also owned the historic Rizzoli bookstore in New York for the past 60 years.

With the acquisition of Chelsea Green Publishing, the Mondadori Group is taking a further step on its international development journey in English-speaking markets, which recently began with the establishment of London-based Rizzoli UK.

“The strengthening of the Mondadori Group’s presence in the United States and the United Kingdom through the acquisition of Chelsea Green Publishing, and the launch of Rizzoli’s new UK branch, are further steps on our growth path outside the domestic trade market. I am therefore delighted to welcome Chelsea Green Publishing, with whom we share a vision of quality editorial content focused on issues related to sustainability and lifestyles that respect ecosystems and nature,” commented Mondadori Group CEO Antonio Porro.

Consideration for the transaction, which will be paid fully in cash on the closing date – expected by the end of the first half of 2024 – is set at $5 million (on a debt-and-cash free basis) and will be subject to adjustment according to the NFP on the date of completion of the acquisition. In the last approved financial statements (2022), the company reported consolidated revenues of USD 8.1 million and an operating income of USD 1.1 million.

As part of this acquisition, Margo Baldwin will assume the role of Publisher Emeritus of Chelsea Green Publishing, guaranteeing the publishing quality and continuity of the company with her extensive experience. Stefano Peccatori will assume the role of CEO and President, leading the international development and strategic integration, working with the Rizzoli International Publications Inc. and Chelsea Green Publishing teams.

Now in its 22nd edition, the renowned literary prize Il Battello a Vapore invites aspiring female writers to take part in the competition again this year, with publication of the winning novel in the famous series of books for boys and girls.

Sara Bongiovanni, with her book Ellie about a sorceress without magic, entered the prestigious Golden Roll of the prize in 2023, which includes some of the most prominent names in literature for young people.

For the 2024 edition, unpublished manuscripts can be uploaded online from 4 March 2024 to 30 June 2024 on the official website www.battelloavapore.it/premio. In the following months, entries will pass through three selection stages. The first is entrusted to professionals in the field, while the second will be carried out by the Il Battello a Vapore editorial team, which will choose the five best manuscripts. The final selection, which will determine the winner and rank the five finalists, will be entrusted to a special jury, which this year is composed of Alessandro Gelso, the editorial manager of Il Battello a Vapore, Sara Bongiovanni, winner of the 2023 edition of the prize, Alessia Gazzola, a best-selling author, Letizia Mazzanti (@prof.andthecity), a blogger and teacher, and Claudio De Signori, owner of the Libreria Jolly in Verona.

The award ceremony will be held in Verona in November 2024, date to be determined.

More information and complete regulations at www.battelloavapore.it/premio.

A long-standing market leader in paperbacks, Oscar Mondadori – now directed by Luigi Belmonte – has signed an agreement with the independent brand NN Editore – founded and directed by Eugenia Dubini – to publish Kent Haruf’s works in paperback. This forms part of a broader editorial policy aimed at reissuing important titles by independent brands in paperback, as is systematically done, for example, in the French publishing market.

«With admiration, I have followed the wise rediscovery and launch of Kent Haruf’s work carried out by NN Editore, along with the success it has achieved. And I dreamed», says Elisabetta Risari, editor at Oscar, «of one day being able to include his novels, with their profound humanity and sober writing, in the wide, varied panorama of modern and contemporary classics in the Oscar Moderni catalogue. Today we celebrate this achievement together with NN and we hope to replicate the experience again in the future.»

«Kent Haruf marked the birth of the NN publishing house and has been winning the hearts of Italian readers for ten years. As of today», says Eugenia Dubini, «Haruf will have two homes. Our editions will be flanked by the paperbacks published by Oscar, and this collaboration — reinforced by the presence of the NN brand on the cover — makes me happy and proud. First, for the author, who is now considered a full-fledged contemporary classic, and also for the readers of the paperbacks, who will meet Haruf in this excellent series.»

It all starts today, 2 April, with the arrival in bookshops of Kent Haruf’s “Plainsong Trilogy” in the new Oscar editions, the richest catalogue in Europe of 20th-century Italian and international authors. Through an agreement with NN Editore, which will retain the original editions, the three books in this highly successful trilogy — Plainsong, Eventide and Benediction — will be available in the “Oscar Moderni” series, followed on 7 May, in “Oscar Cult”, by the bestseller Our Souls at Night.

Often compared to Faulkner and Hemingway, his constant points of reference, Kent Haruf shares the rejection of any stylistic affectation and extraordinarily clean dialogue with another American literary giant, Raymond Carver.

Released by NN between 2015 and 2016, Plainsong, Eventide and Benediction have garnered a loyal and devoted audience, and more readers will now be able to travel to Holt County, smile at Addie Moore or meet the unforgettable McPheron brothers.

The Mondadori Group announces that, through Mondadori Libri S.p.A., it has entered a start-up to develop the webnovel market in Europe.

The initiative, which involves an initial investment of € 1.5 million in 2024, and an additional € 1.5 million planned for 2025, stems from an agreement with Bookrepublic, an industrial partner with specific know-how and capable of supporting future operational growth. The company led by Marco Ferrario has been at the forefront of digital publishing in Italy for more than 10 years and has always been attentive to new literary trends.

The deal will come to fruition with the launch by the end of the year of a dedicated proprietary app – to be called Narae. Developed by an in-house team, initially with content in Italian and French, it will gradually expand its reach to encompass other European countries.

Designed to be read on a smartphone screen, webnovels are a form of serialised fiction of a highly innovative nature which, having started with great success in South Korea, has gained growing popularity and a solid fanbase in Japan and China as well. Content takes the form of series – primarily in the romance, fantasy, and crime genres – and is designed to originate and be enjoyed in other formats as well. Webnovels consist of a large number of short episodes, often more than a hundred, and, if successful, they can extend indefinitely.

After a recent launch in the United States and a successful debut in France, webnovels are now ready to conquer Europe, particularly following the global spread of Korean entertainment content in music, film, and comics.

«This investment reaffirms our Group’s willingness to look at what is most innovativein the international publishing environment. As it evolves, the world of webnovels is demonstrating creativity and the ability to feed other media as well, such as cinema, television series, and in many cases even book publishing itself» says Enrico Selva Coddè, CEO of Mondadori Libri.

«Webnovels are a very interesting and avant-garde model of digital publishing: they could be defined as the digital reinterpretation of serialised novels published in newspapers in the 1800s – says Marco Ferrario, CEO of Bookrepublic; and it is not surprising for it now to originate in an Asian country. The content is created specifically to be read on a mobile, borrowing techniques used in the production of video series and providing ways of accessing content that are inspired by gaming. Our challenge will be to find the route into Europe with this model», concludes Ferrario.

Bookrepublic was founded in 2010 by Marco Ferrario together with financial partners Gianluca Andena and Guido Paolo Gamucci (both former Permira partners), Marco Pittini and Guido Carissimo and has always been one of the leading players in the distribution and sale of ebooks and audiobooks in Italy. Over time, Bookrepublic has played a leading role in many digital publishing initiatives, including the organisation of IfBookThen, one of the most successful events in Europe on digital innovation in publishing, and the launch of digital-only brands such as 40K and emma books. In March 2024, the German group Bookwire, European leader in digital distribution, chose Bookrepublic as its Italian partner for its entry into this market.