‘Italy Reads Pakistan Award’ to be presented at KLF today

The ‘Italy Reads Pakistan Award’ by Metropoli d’Asia, the Karachi Lieterature Festival, and the Consulate-General of Italy, is to be presented on Saturday morning (today) at the Karachi Literature Festival (KLF).

This was announced at a press conference held at a local hotel by Ameena Saiyid, OBE, Managing Director, Oxford University Press (Pakistan), Italian Consul-General Gianluca Rubagotti, and Italian publisher Andrea Berrini.

Saiyid said that the prize would be an ideal exercise in diplomacy and would create access to Italian leadership.

She narrated an interesting coincidence. She said that last December she was on holiday in Rome and was having trouble fixing some small gadget. A florist came over to her and offered to do the needful and it turned out that he was a Pakistani.

She was just corroborating the statement of Italian CG Rubagotti to the effect that the concentration of the Pakistanis in Italy was the second largest after the United Kingdom.

Italian author Andrea Berrini, founder and CEO of Metropoli d’Asia, said that the new Asian talent were casting their works in modern contemporary and urban life. The Italian publishers, he said, were looking for works connotative of universal values.

The prize is to the tune of 1,000 Euros with royalties of eight percent on the print edition, six percent for paperback, and 25 percent for net earnings on e-book sales.