The Sharjah International Book Fair, one of the earliest
initiatives of its kind in the Gulf region, has had another successful edition.
As it winds down on Saturday, what is billed as the world’s third largest book
fair would have attracted almost two million visitors, according to official
figures, compared with last year’s number of 2.31 million. The fair opened at
the Sharjah Expo Centre on November 1.
For
Sharjah, this is not quite a ‘soft power’ push. In its 36th edition this year,
the fair pre-dates initiatives of its ilk that would be seen today as moves by
the energy-rich economies of the Gulf region looking for diversified post-oil
era options.
With
the theme ‘A World in My Book’, the event featured 1,650 publishing houses from
60 countries. About 130 of the publishing houses were from India. More than 1.5
million books in different languages were made available at the sprawling
venue.
A
number of Indian authors were among the notable participants. They ranged from
Vikas Swarup, Indian High Commissioner to Canada; Neel Mukherjee, who was
shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2014; Jairam Ramesh; Rajdeep Sardesai and
Sagarika Ghose; Manu Joseph and Derek O’Brien.
Hema
Malini was here, promoting her biography, Beyond the Dream Girl ,
which was penned by Ram Kamal Mukherjee and for which Prime Minister Narendra
Modi wrote the foreword. Asha Parekh made an appearance to present her
autobiography, The Hit Girl , written by Khalid Mohammed.
An
overwhelming number of visitors on Friday, a weekly holiday on which the fair
opened later than usual at 4 p.m. to run till 11 p.m., seemed to be from the
Indian subcontinent.
Young
readers in focus
Amid a
babel of tongues, playful expatriate children flitted around, occasionally
taking a giggling peek at the displayed tomes. The fair featured a number of
child-friendly events, ranging from ‘Young Engineers in the Making’ to a
‘storytelling puppet’ workshop, to a watercolour art workshop and a comics
exhibition. The youngest author to be featured was nine-year-old Justina Jibin
from India, who presented her book, My Imaginary World , a sprightly
collection of poems and stories.
Among
the winners of the SIBF awards presented at the fair, the one for the Best
International Publisher went to Mathrubhumi Printing and Publishing, based in
Kerala. The inaugural prize for the best work of translation, the Turjuman
Award, went to Spanish publisher Editorial Verbum for its translation of One
Thousand and One Nights.
The
reproduction of a rare Koran manuscript was a particular highlight. On display
at the University of Birmingham stand, it is a copy of the original,
carbon-dated to between A.D. 468-645.
Sharjah
is staking claim in as many words to being the ‘Islamic cultural capital’ and
the ‘cultural capital of the Arab world’, priding in its “ever-increasing
international status as a source of knowledge, positivity and ambition”, as
Ahmed Al-Ameri, Chairman of the Sharjah Book Authority (SBA) said. The city has
been named Unesco’s World Book Capital 2019.
The
Sharjah Publishing City (SPC), recently inaugurated by the Ruler of Sharjah, is
expected to become a destination for publishers, with a window to the global
books market. As it grows, it is slated to be home to more than 500 publishing
companies from around the world, with a printing capacity of a million books a
day.
It
will provide more than 15 million books in multiple languages through
institutions and publishing houses that operate from the facility.
Source:THE HINDU-11th November,2017
