Founded in 1958 by Alberto Mondadori, who announced the news to William Faulkner by letter, Il Saggiatore remains committed today to its original mission: to publish books that convey a precise identity.
Our distinctiveness rests on the authors whose work we bring out: Claude LéviStrauss, Ernesto De Martino, Simone de Beauvoir, Noam Chomsky, Daron Acemoglu, Paul Mason, Witold Gombrowicz, Joan Didion, Geoff Dyer, Olivia Laing, Mircea Cărtărescu and others. Together, our backlist and more recent releases form one grand tome with a precise profile.
Il Saggiatore is grounded in the Enlightenment, Neoclassicism and a secular conception of culture. We envision books as tools with which to examine reality. Throughout its long and storied past, our publishing house has remained independent, putting out titles we believe in rather than catering to market demands. Il Saggiatore is not an academic press.
We are not so much interested in current affairs as we are in investigating contemporaneity. Our outlook is international, and we are supporters of radical reformism. Il Saggiatore publishes both fiction and nonfiction, often in blended form; we believe that essays can also be a type of narrative, and novels tools for knowledge. Il Saggiatore eschews ideologies. We focus on peripheries, in our belief that they are often actually at the centre of matters. Il Saggiatore’s primary traits are curiosity, exploration and knowledge. We will continue to survey the worlds we live in and to help engender new ones.

For further information, to receive a PDF or a sample copy or to be added to our foreign rights newsletter write to Rebecca Mombelli rights@ilsaggiatore.com