After a halt, the General Egyptian Book Organisation (GEBO) is once again participating in several regional and international book fairs. The first one was the Frankfurt International Book Fair held early this month, where Egypt participated with publications of GEBO, the Family Library, the Cultural Development Fund, the National Archives and the Supreme Council of Culture. Among the most important is the Art Renaissance Encyclopedia written by the late Tharwat Okasha, rare manuscripts and old paintings of Arabic calligraphy as well as Salah Abdel-Sabour's book of poetry, Ahlam Al-Fares Al-Qadim (Dreams of the ancient Knight). During the five days of the fair the GEBO also launched the participation catalogue for the 45th round of the Cairo International Book Fair, to be held in January 2014, in order to provide potential participants with the opportunity to organise themselves. Several rights deals for translation into Arabic were signed. Next week, according to GEBO Chairman Ahmed Megahed, GEBO will participate in the Tunisia Book Fair. It will also be present at the 18th round of the Algeria International Book Salon in early November with 1,500 titles available at a sale price of up to 20 per cent less. The same will happen in the Sharjah and Kuwait International Book Fairs. *** The Egyptian Academy in Rome opened this winter's cultural season under the slogan “Culture as soft power” with an evening entitled “Culture, the gate to freedom and a stronger identity”, which discussed the role of culture in communities and its impact on friendship and political relations between countries. Novelist Youssef Al-Qaid highlighted the role of translation in building cultural bridges of communication between nations. He also underlined the books and films that have been translated from Arabic to Italian and vice-versa and how they played an important role in the Egyptian film industry at the beginning of the 20th century. For his part poet Sayed Hegab talked about the late Salah Jahin and Fouad Haddad's poems, which spread the Egyptian vernacular outside Egypt. According to the Director of the Egyptian Art Academy in Rome Gihan Zaki, the academy will organise several art exhibitions among which is an exhibition on Egypt by the 19th-century Italian photographer Roberto Lucchinetti featuring images of historical sites and monuments. Another exhibition, “Egypt's conditions through caricature”, is by cartoonist Amr Okasha, who reflects events and social conditions in the period between January 2011 and 30 June. This season, the Egyptian Academy will be rounding out the calendar of conferences and exhibitions with a series of events for children.
