The Rovelli case shakes publishing. Lagioia: “If an author attacks the government he is killed, a bad sign”

“Speechless, and full solidarity with Carlo Rovelli”. After the withdrawal of the invitation from the Frankfurt Book Fair to Carlo Rovelli, the director of the Turin Book Fair, Nicola Lagioia, takes the field in favor of the physicist. “One can think very differently from him on the Ukrainian question – writes Lagioia – but in this way a bad signal passes from the publishing world: if an author attacks the government he will be killed”. On the pro-Rovelli front is Gad Lerner, who speaks of “an indelible stain on the reputation of Italian culture”. Solidarity for Rovelli also from the opposition: “It is very serious for freedom of research and thought, for democracy in this country that it has been censored and cannot represent Italy at the Frankfurt Book Fair”, says the senator Cecilia D’Elia, leader of the Democratic Party in the School, University, Research and Culture Commission and spokesperson for the Conference of Democrats.

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, commissioner for the Frankfurt Book Fair, writes to him in the email withdrawing the invitation to the most important book fair in Europe: “The clamor, the echo, the reactions that followed his speech at the Primo May lead me to think, they give me, indeed, the almost certainty, that his lecture that I had so strongly wanted for the inauguration of the Buchmesse with Italy as Guest of Honor would become an opportunity not to savor the charm of research, but to relive controversies and attacks”.

Rovelli, from the Concertone stage, 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”. But Levi is not hiding behind a finger. He reminds Rovelli: “What I feel more than anything else the duty to avoid – and for this I take full, personal responsibility – 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 don’t hide from you the hope that our country will be represented at the highest institutional level”.