The 2025 edition of Taobuk marks the launch of the Premio Strega Non-Fiction, a newly established section of Italy’s most prestigious literary award, devoted to works that question contemporary reality and make a vital contribution to public discourse.
This new category is the result of a collaboration between Taobuk – Taormina Book Festival, the Maria and Goffredo Bellonci Foundation and Strega Alberti Benevento, with the support of BPER Banca, FUIS, the Gabinetto Vieusseux and the Casa dell’Architettura, media partnership from RAI, and technical backing from Feltrinelli Librerie and SYGLA.
The aim of the award is to promote high-quality non-fiction, acknowledging its essential role in equipping readers with critical tools to navigate the complexities of our time. For Taobuk, it represents a natural extension of a longstanding commitment to exploring the transformations that define the present and anticipate the future—championing culture as a means of understanding, awareness, and civic engagement.
Officially launched on 11 February 2025 at the Casa dell’Architettura – Acquario Romano, the prize is overseen by a scientific committee composed of Carlo Felice Casula, Alfonso Celotto, Antonella Ferrara, Simonetta Fiori, Paolo Giordano, Francesca Mannocchi, Nico Pitrelli, Lucrezia Reichlin, Nino Rizzo Nervo and Giovanni Solimine. Their task has been to select five works published between January 2024 and February 2025, distinguished by analytical precision and the ability to foster critical thought.
The five shortlisted titles, announced on 15 April, are:
- Geopolitica dell’intelligenza artificiale by Alessandro Aresu (Feltrinelli)
- Il suicidio di Israele by Anna Foa (Laterza)
- Corpo, umano by Vittorio Lingiardi (Einaudi)
- 2100. Come sarà l’Asia, come saremo noi by Simone Pieranni (Mondadori)
- Narrare l’Italia by Luigi Zoja (Bollati Boringhieri)
The winner will be selected by a jury of around fifty prominent figures from across Italy’s cultural landscape, including scholars, journalists, and academics.
Alongside the main prize, the Premio Strega for International Non-Fiction—awarded by the organising committee to a non-Italian author translated into Italian—has, in its inaugural edition, been awarded to Anne Applebaum for her book Autocrazie (Mondadori). The jury praised the work in the following terms:
Anne Applebaum’s latest book represents the culmination—and a further evolution—of her intellectual journey, marked by originality, independence of thought, and an unwavering commitment to the defence of democracy. In this new reflection, centred on the architects of a new global order, she shows how today’s autocracies, often seen as isolated and ideologically divergent, are in fact deeply interconnected, forming a self-sustaining ecosystem capable of undermining democratic norms from within as well as without.
Building on earlier works such as Iron Curtain (2016) and Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine (2019), Autocracy, Inc. traces both the legacies and the departures from twentieth-century systems of repression. While Gulag—which earned Applebaum the Pulitzer Prize—provided a definitive historical account of Soviet-era political violence, Autocracy, Inc. reveals how the architecture of authoritarian rule has been adapted and refined for the digital age.
What sets Applebaum’s work apart is not only its historical depth but also the prescience of her journalism. She has long anticipated the threats posed by Putinism and by the rise of political actors who operate beyond the bounds of democratic norms. By tracing the evolution of disinformation, state-sponsored violence, and ideological manipulation, Applebaum offers a comprehensive framework for understanding how autocracies not only endure but flourish in a globalised world. A vital civic intervention—written with clarity, moral urgency, and intellectual force—accessible to a wide and diverse readership.
The awards ceremony, bringing together the five Italian finalists and the international winner, will take place on 20 June in Taormina, as part of the fifteenth edition of Taobuk – Taormina International Book Festival.
