Da marginali a classici di oggi: le 'letterature minori' dell'area slava orientale nel panorama editoriale italiano

In this contribution we analyse how minor literatures from the Eastern Slavic area manage to enter the Italian cultural space by also using “major languages”. In the case of Ukrainian and Belarusian literature, this tendency may be seen as being in contrast with the dynamics of the respective national publishing industries, in which Russian-language authors are not very successful or may not even be considered as belonging to the national canon. On the basis of these premises, we will focus on the cases of Andrei Kurkov and Aleksei Nikitin for Ukraine, and on Sviatlana Aleksievich and Dmitrii Strotsev for Belarus. In conclusion, we will touch upon broader issues of the western publishing industry in the light of the relationship between Italian cultural institutions and their Ukrainian and Belarusian counterparts.