Great books, it is said, not only help you understand, but also help you feel understood. At the 25th Doha International Book Fair that will be held from January 7 to 17 at Doha Exhibition Center, featuring thousands of books, you are guaranteed to find a stash of great ones poised to enrich you and make you feel understood.
The 2015 edition will mark the Silver Jubilee of the Doha International Book Fair, and will be unprecedented in many ways. For starters, it will be accompanied by several events that won’t be confined to books. It will include many literary-themed events, exhibition of works of art, a play, workshops, an exhibition on book development and other cultural and artistic events. There will also be activities designed exclusively for children.
So expect everything from poetry evenings to fascinating talks by guest speakers. Alongside, the Doha Cultural Festival, which has been on hold since 2009, will also take place. This means that if you love books or the arts, there is no way you can skip this gathering.
The 24th edition featured 22,000 books and 360 publishers from 29 countries. As part of the Qatar-UK Year of Culture, the United Kingdom was Guest of Honour at the event in December 2013. It had seen more than 400 titles from WHSmith, HarperCollins, Bloomsbury, Hachette, Pan Macmillan, Random House, and Scholastic.
There were a series of insightful events, too. The Literary Translation Summit, for instance, brought together 36 writers and translators for an intensive week of literary translation workshops and panel discussions. Throughout the fair, Learn English Kids and Maktaba Storytelling Time, in English and Arabic, were held for families with young children.
A project titled Walking Cities paired two writers together, with each one taking turns to visit the other’s native city. Award-winning poet Colette Bryce from Derry, Northern Ireland, was hosted in Doha by poet Maryam al-Subaiey, who then made the return trip to Derry. They gave readings and discussed their findings from their explorations in both cities.
Another highlight of the book fair was the panel discussion on Shakespeare and translation, delivered by Patrick Spottiswoode, Director of Education at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London, and Niels Brunse, translator and writer.
In his piece on the previous edition, Roger Tagholm had written for the website Publishing Perspectives: “Like Sharjah and Abu Dhabi, it’s a selling fair, effectively a giant bookshop, so once again the aisles are full of families pushing along the familiar, branded (DIBF) cardboard box wheelie trolleys that you see in Abu Dhabi.”
However, while a book fair essentially is a sales event that focuses on selling maximum books, the Doha International Book Fair offers a wholesome literary experience, complete with a veritable list of cultural activities and events.
During the 24th Fair in December 2013, Fair Director Abdulla al-Ansari had said, “Last year we had up to 130,000 visitors and this year we hope for more.”
Going by the long wait for the return of such a massive book expo, the footfall for the 2015 edition, starting next week, promises to be the biggest.