The government’s point man for the event, conservative journalist Mauro Mazza, broke the news on Tuesday.
Italy is a special guest at this year’s event.
Gomorrah author Saviano had a show on the mafia pulled by state broadcaster Rai after the right-wing government took over in autumn 2022.
Scurati had a monologue on Giorgia Meloni’s alleged failure to reckon with her neofascist past recently pulled on Liberation Day.
Mazza said, however, that it was not a question of discrimination but a desire to “give space to authors who have not had it in the past”.
He suggested that both authors might be invited by German publishers to the October 16-20 fair.
Saviano has had to go into police protection after Camorra death threats after his 2006 bestseller Gomorrah, which later spawned a Cannes award winning film and a hit TV series.
He was successfully sued by Meloni for calling her a “bastard” over migrant children’s deaths amid her fierce anti-migrant rhetoric while in opposition in 2020.
Scurati, the author of an acclaimed biography of Mussolini, was set to deliver a monologue on Rai marking the day Italy celebrates its liberation from Fascism and Nazism on April 25.
The monologue was pulled after he tacked on an analysis of Meloni’s “post-Fascist” party and its alleged inability to come to terms with its neo-Fascist predecessors, allegedly shown by its inability to call itself anti-fascist.
Rai denied censorship and said the last-minute decision was due to Scurati’s overly steep fee.
Meloni, who has repeatedly condemned Fascism, published the monologue, in its entirety, on her social media platforms.
ANSA
