With only 300 publishers from 14 countries, Riyadh Book Fair was nothing compared to other book fairs in the region such as Bahrain's Book Fair, especially that the organizers labeled it as an "International" event. The publishers came mainly from Arab World plus some other countries, and for the first time in years, there was one Iraqi publisher.
Some books, such as the Saudi minister of labour Ghazi Al-Gosaibi's novel Abu-Shallakh Al-Bermai, went out of stock very quickly, while many, many other books will return home with the same dust they came with.
The extremist Islamists were present in the book fair by plenty of publishers, but I did not dare to go and look at their area. Mainly because I'm not interested in reading titles about how the rest of the world will be burnt in hell, and basically because I was wearing my beloved Italian jeans.
I could not get the banned books I told you about, but I purchased another new banned book by the same author. The name of the book is Min Huna Yabda At-Taghier (Change Starts from Here). I knew it is banned because the salesperson was hiding it, and when I took it he did not write down the name of the book in the invoice, and instead he wrote "Special Offer"!
In addition to that, I purchased four other books; Mudun Takul Al-Ushb (Cities That Eat Grass) by Abdu Khal, Awwal Al-Jasad Akher Al-Bahr (The Beginning of the Body, the End of the Sea) by Adoneece, Al-Qaroura (The Bottle) by Yousef Al-Muhaimeed, and last but not least, the Arabic edition of Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser.
If you missed this fair, you didn't miss much. But It was something nice to break the daily routine of this boring university. However, because no important authors attended, and no new books released, one could say the book fair itself was boring!
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Some books, such as the Saudi minister of labour Ghazi Al-Gosaibi's novel Abu-Shallakh Al-Bermai, went out of stock very quickly, while many, many other books will return home with the same dust they came with.
The extremist Islamists were present in the book fair by plenty of publishers, but I did not dare to go and look at their area. Mainly because I'm not interested in reading titles about how the rest of the world will be burnt in hell, and basically because I was wearing my beloved Italian jeans.
I could not get the banned books I told you about, but I purchased another new banned book by the same author. The name of the book is Min Huna Yabda At-Taghier (Change Starts from Here). I knew it is banned because the salesperson was hiding it, and when I took it he did not write down the name of the book in the invoice, and instead he wrote "Special Offer"!
In addition to that, I purchased four other books; Mudun Takul Al-Ushb (Cities That Eat Grass) by Abdu Khal, Awwal Al-Jasad Akher Al-Bahr (The Beginning of the Body, the End of the Sea) by Adoneece, Al-Qaroura (The Bottle) by Yousef Al-Muhaimeed, and last but not least, the Arabic edition of Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser.
If you missed this fair, you didn't miss much. But It was something nice to break the daily routine of this boring university. However, because no important authors attended, and no new books released, one could say the book fair itself was boring!
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