There is a harmony hidden in things, wrote poet Giusi Verbaro in ‘Light from Hakepa’. And Hyle Book Festival, which every year finds inspiration in a verse of Calabria’s poetry, makes this statement its own for the 2023 edition, which returns from 16 to 18 August in Villaggio Mancuso, in the Sila Piccola.

An invitation to seek that harmony often invisible but constant in everyday life and in the things that inevitably, extraordinarily happen. A harmony enclosed in illustration, an ode to the beauty of nature, an expression of the balance between us and the world around us.

If with the theme ‘For Other Paths’, the 2022 festival explored the horizontality and multiplicity of paths branching off in parallel, Hyle 2023 wants to go deep to discover hidden and perhaps for this reason more authentic harmonies, in a vertical descent to the essence.

This is what the very name of the festival expresses, in the dual meaning of ‘wood’ and ‘substance’: a festival immersed in the woods and forests of Sila that wants to reflect on the essence of things through literature, considered a living entity with which to observe the world, develop a critical sentiment, understand reality, strengthen one’s imagination and feel free.

Once again, the theme will be declined in the literary heart of the exhibition and in multifaceted languages, through the aid of art, nature, music, theatre, cinema, excursions, dance and creativity. Everything will talk about books, but in heterogeneous and unexpected ways, to immerse oneself in nature and see how powerfully and how topical literature is able to surprise us, amuse us, speak to us.