At Festivaletteratura, thousands of minds pass through the city together with thousands of bodies, which are the handy tool - the physical object - through which (our) minds offer themselves to the world: there are different bodies among them, emerging from that spectrum of those privileged enough to have the opportunity to take part in a literary festival in a provincial town in southern Europe.

A literary festival is, by nature, devoted to multiplicity - first and foremost, the multitudes of languages – and, therefore, if it really wants to speak about the world, it must be a celebration of the plurality of bodies and to the beauty of non-conformist, marginalized bodies, those that are hyper-represented precisely because of their non-conformism. In Mantua, there will be events dedicated to the "bothersome" bodies as told by Paolo Nori who infiltrate into the body of the city; the sick bodies of Pia Pera (in a reading by Lorenza Zambon and Marco Remondini) and Clara Gallini, who made their illnesses objects of study, thought and poetry; the rebellious bodies that ignore borders, who fight for and with their own presence such as migrants in Europe and black bodies in the United States (with Wu Ming 1 and Fabrizio Puglisi); the dead and crucified body, the weakness when nudity becomes an "extra charge of infamy" (with Erri de Luca).

Festivaletteratura, a celebration of the mind, chooses to celebrate the body, in the singular, in its biological majesty, with an "extraordinary journey from the skull to the heel", guided by Gavin Francis. In Mantua, like everywhere, bodies have an anatomy that is partially shared (Sissi will give a lesson on emotive anato-my) but one that also has a very personal form (the stylist Gentucca Bini will lead the audience as they create their own ensemble). And the body - which we all have - may offer up disgrace in its dignity, in its smells, in its meat, in its sexual impulses: in this vein, Sarah Waters will illuminate the stereotypical darkness of the Victorian age, speaking about female bodies.

This small map serves as a guide through the events of Festivaletteratura which speak about our bodies and those of others, in the name of collective awareness that we too have a body: a body that walks through the streets of Mantua.