After the controversy with the government, the Buchmesse cancels Rovelli

“Italy asked me to represent it at the opening ceremony of the Frankfurt Book Fair, but as I dared to criticize the defense minister, my speech was cancelled.” Thus Carlo Rovelli, a highly successful literary physicist, announces that he has received an email from Franco Ricardo Levi, commissioner for the Frankfurt Book Fair, withdrawing his invitation to the most important book fair in Europe (and perhaps even beyond).

Rovelli has been at the center of controversy in recent days for his speech at the May Day Concert in which he criticized, without compliments, the work of the Italian government in Ukraine. Levi wrote to him: «The clamor, the echo, the reactions that followed his speech at the May Day concert lead me to think, indeed they give me the almost certainty, that his lesson that I had so strongly wanted to the inauguration of the Buchmesse with Italy as Guest of Honor would become an opportunity not to savor the fascination of research, but to relive controversies and attacks».

Rovelli had been clear. Maybe too much: “Everyone says peace, but they add that you have to win to make peace, only that wanting peace after victory means wanting war.” Levi doesn’t hide behind a finger. He reminds Rovelli: «What I feel more than anything else the duty to avoid – and I take full, personal responsibility for this – is that an occasion of celebration and also of just national pride, turns into a source of embarrassment for those who will represent Italy that day. And I won’t hide from you the hope that our country will be represented at the highest institutional level».