The Opening Meeting of BookCity Milano 2026
The opening event kicks off the festival week with a look at the United States, blending literature and current events: the author will engage in dialogue with Francesco Costa, a journalist and director of Il Post. The discussion will be hosted by Giovanna Zucconi. For this occasion, Whitehead will be awarded the City Seal by the Mayor of Milan, Giuseppe Sala.
The City Seal of Milan
“Milan is pleased to award the City Seal to an author who has told, with rare sensitivity, the social and cultural transformations of contemporary metropolises and the people who inhabit them,” declares the Mayor, who adds: “Colson Whitehead’s voice is one of the most original in contemporary fiction. With his ability to unite historical rigor and narrative imagination, he has traversed crucial moments in American history while conveying the complexity of individual experiences within large-scale collective changes. In his novels he narrates the evolution of a neighborhood and a city over decades, weaving urban history, daily life, and the memory of communities.”
Luca Formenton, president of the BookCity Milano Foundation, comments: “Colson Whitehead’s writing fully embodies what, in times of conflicts and uncertainties like ours, we ask of books: to question the present and go to the depths of things,” underscoring that “with him, we want to inaugurate this 15th edition precisely in the spirit of the theme that runs through it, which seeks to reclaim the order and meaning of a world that seems to have lost them. The dialogue with Francesco Costa, who has been closely observing the United States for years, seems to us the most natural way to open a week that aims to be, above all, an invitation to reflect together on the world around us.”
The Theme of BookCity Milano 2026
BookCity Milano, the festival dedicated to books and reading, returns from 23 to 29 November 2026. With the new curatorship entrusted to Marco Balzano, the event presents itself this year in a renewed form, with formats designed to make books a space for active dialogue and for genuine encounters between writers and readers. The program will be unveiled on Monday, 26 October at 11 a.m., at the Piccolo Teatro Grassi (Via Rovello 2, Milan).
“The Moon’s Reason – Seven Days of Books, Reasons, and Madness” is the year’s thematic focus, drawing inspiration from one of the most celebrated episodes of world literature: Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, in which Astolfo travels to the Moon to retrieve the paladin’s reason, housed in a glass ampoule. “A powerful yet fragile image, speaking to us, even after more than five centuries, about how increasingly necessary and urgent it is today to strive to rediscover the thread of lucidity,” the organizers comment.
“In Orlando Furioso, the protagonist’s reason is kept in a vial”
“In Orlando Furioso, the protagonist’s reason is kept in a vial,” explains Marco Balzano, who continues: “Fragility and passions, but above all the irrationality of his behavior and the futility of ambitions, threaten his rationality along with the ability to discern the better and to choose goodness. The reason on the Moon signals the disorientation in which, amid war and violent aims, we experience our daily lives and imagine the future. Reflecting on Orlando’s madness means pondering the need for rationality, the necessity of peace, and the care of our critical and intellectual sensibility that can never be entirely entrusted to technology. Books are, in themselves, an act of reason and a desire to share with others. Words serve as a bridge that fosters dialogue and helps to recover reason. The books that will animate this year’s discussions will be our journey to the Moon to recover the ampoule with which to rediscover the Earth.”
The press conference for BookCity Milano 2026 will be held on Monday, October 26, 2026, at 11:00, at the Piccolo Teatro Grassi.
