(ANSA) - ROME, MAY 29 - Top Italian novelist Sandro Veronesi said Wednesday that he will not be part of the Italian delegation at October's Frankfurt Book Fair, where Italy is this year's guest of honour, after left-leaning author and government critic Roberto Saviano was excluded.
    The government's pointman for the event, conservative journalist Mauro Mazza, said Tuesday that it was not a question of discrimination that Saviano did not feature on the list of 100 Italian authors attending the Buchmesse, but a desire to "give space to authors who have not had it in the past".
    "The stupid, ridiculous reasons with which Commissioner Mazza justified Roberto Saviano's exclusion do not allow me to accept the invitation I received," said Veronesi, a two-time winner of Italy's top literary award, the Strega Prize.
    "This interference by the premier and her most trusted aides on decisions that should not be based on political logic continues, accompanied by 'Putinian hypocrisy'.
    "If it is necessary for work reasons, I will go to Frankfurt as a private individual".
    Gomorrah author Saviano had a show on the mafia pulled by state broadcaster Rai after Premier Giorgia Meloni's rightwing government took office in autumn 2022.
    Saviano has had to go into police protection after Camorra death threats after his 2006 bestseller Gomorra, which later spawned a Cannes award winning film and a hit TV series.
    He was successfully sued by Meloni for calling her a "bastard" over migrant children's deaths amid her fierce anti-migrant rhetoric while in opposition in 2020. (ANSA).