The eighth Italian Book Fair was held on May 18-23 1995. 191,000 visitors (of whom 19,000 professionals) flocked to the three exhibition pavilions of Lingotto Fiere and the nine conference halls of Lingotto Congressi, a 22% increase with respect to 1994, when 156,000 visitors attended. The most assiduous 'professional visitors' (booksellers, teachers, librarians, agents, distributors etc) were teachers and university lecturers (10,210 and 1,172 respectively), librarians (1,685) and booksellers (1,075). 30,000 secondary schools students also attended. In a total area of 34,000 square metres, 940 exhibitors displayed over 244,000 titles. About 200 meetings, attended by close on 50,000 people, were staged in the various conference halls, in the special space for talks with the authors themselves and the multimedia arena, where new electronic media were also presented and discussed.

Exciting new features included a new exhibition pavilion, the use of Lingotto Congressi for conferences and the focus on an effective title cum discussion topic, 'Ninety-five%'.

The idea behind 'Ninety-five%' was to encourage a progressively detailed year by year summing-up of this century of ours, with special emphasis on the breakaway phenomena - the revolutions-revelations - that have been so much a part of it.

The new topic for 1996 will be a question that begs to be asked: has this been the century of women?

The century which is about to end is widely believed to have been the century of women. In what sense? The answer is immediately obvious to all. In the course of the century, in fact, a cultural pattern which governed the behaviour of western man for over two million years has disintegrated. The pattern in question is that of The Odyssey and the life-model of Ulysses. On his leisurely return home to Ithaca, Ulysses sailed the whole Mediterranean, experiencing a variety of adventures. He meets - among others - Circe, Calypso, Nausicaa and the Sirens, and he delights in the experience. But he never forgets that one day he will return to Ithaca.

And what does Penelope do back home? She waits for her husband to return, she tends the house, she holds suitors at bay, she weaves her winding-sheet. A traditional woman in a traditional role, she weaves in another sense, hatching astute plots to safeguard the patriarchal pattern of life.

At a certain point, that pattern begins to disintegrate. In Joyce's Ulysses, the point of arrival of centuries of variations on the Odyssey theme, Penelope becomes Molly. In her celebrated final monologue (65 pages without a single punctuation mark!), a completely different female figure emerges. She wholeheartedly grasps all opportunities, encounters - life itself. She has, in short, become Ulysses.

Joyce was writing in 1921. Many other events have happened since then: from the invention of the pill (food for thought about science's extraordinary importance in the course of our century) and the technological progress which has transformed hearth and home into battles 'won' for women's civil rights to the Church's recent and surprising change in direction. So what point have we reached today? A point in which Freud's question 'What does woman want?' may be turned upside down into 'What does man want?' This bothered and bewildered man of today - what does he expect of the new woman, changed, changing and perhaps set to change still?

And why - authors as diverse as Susan Sontag to Tahar Ben Jelloun ask - why is man, secretly but undeniably, always so afraid of her?

The twentieth century has shattered the female imagination and reassembled it into a complex new identity. The process is reflected in the symbol for the 1996 Fair in which a collage of many different pictorial references supplements the traditional blue and green book designed by Armando Testa. Close observation reveals details of: Pelizza da Volpedo (The Fourth Estate, 1901), Pablo Picasso (Les demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907), Fritz Lang (Metropolis, 1926), Matisse (Pink Nude, 1935), Fernand Légér (Femme Lisant, 1949), Andy Warhol (Marilyn, 1964), Roy Lichtenstein (Still Life, 1972), Allen Jones (Design, 1973), Georges Pichard (Marie-Gabrielle in the Orient, 1980).

Alongside cultural initiatives, the Fair will also provide an overview of the ever changing world of publishing. It will be supplemented by new public meeting spaces, a more evenly distributed exhibition area, professional meeting points and renewed attention to the world of education. Other new features will include cut prices for the elderly and a series of meetings on European publishing reserved for members of the trade.

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