Anticipating the Frankfurt Book Fair, AUC Press director Mark Linz warns Youssef Rakha against inflated attitudes With preparations underway for the Arab contribution to the 2004 Frankfurt International Book Fair in October, a range of tribulations cloud the prospect of this "wonderful opportunity" less than five months before the opening. None have been adequately allayed. For one thing the funding required to occupy nine square kilometres of exhibition grounds, and to support a year-long programme of extra-literary activities, is still far from forthcoming, the 16 participating states having paid the Arab League -- the project's official coordinator -- less than one fifth of the estimated five million US dollar budget. Lebanon, for one major publishing centre -- and the country whose own initiatives were the central driving force behind Frankfurt's decision to choose the Arab world as the fair's guest of honour this year -- has yet to contribute its share of the funding. Morocco, another important country, has decided to conduct its affairs independently of the Arab League and, instead, to exhibit its literary wares in a separate wing alongside the principal -- Arab League -- venue. A Cairo-based German-American publisher who first visited the fair in 1954, Mark Linz describes the Arab world's guest of honour presentation as "an organisational challenge", pointing out that, while "a lot of effort seems to be expended" on the extracurricular programme, the "more focussed, complex, confusing work", the kind of work that "brings together publishers and by extension authors in a real cultural dialogue centred on publishing", has not received as much attention. Writing in Akhbar Al-Adab, the celebrated literary journal he edits, this week novelist Gamal El-Ghitani, perhaps the only Egyptian author with a European (French) literary agent, stressed the Arab League's failure to involve Arab cultural figures with sufficient -- international -- experience, relying instead on "the cultural bureaucracies", whose representatives' experience remains local and largely lacking. Others have pointed out that celebrated literary figures whose names appear on the programme -- Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, for example -- have yet to be contacted, let alone consulted... It may be well to point out that, by counting the 22 Arab states a single entity, the fair administration introduced an essential organisational difficulty into the project. "To have 22 countries," Linz told Al-Ahram Weekly, "where normally it's one -- it could be Switzerland or the Soviet Union, but in the end it's one country -- that in itself makes the process organisationally far more complicated." Along similar lines, in his article El-Ghitani -- having mentioned conflicting German perspectives on the Arab world (most, he implies, are not entirely free of Western prejudice) -- goes on to point out that, notwithstanding Germany's ignorance of the fact, the failure of the Arab League is only to be expected. "It's becoming clear to me now that, in dealing with the Arab League, which does not possess a strong enough authority with which to impose a certain vision on Arab states, the Germans made a mistake. Had their dealings been undertaken individually with each state, perhaps a kind of competitiveness would have ensued -- something that Arabs don't tend to achieve when they work together." Be that as it may, it is somewhat "too late", to use El-Ghitani's phrase, to pontificate about what should have been done. During a seminar in Beirut last week, the principal players on the Arab side, extracts of whose statements were published in the daily Al- Ahram on Sunday, outlined an over-optimistic, not to say misleading view. Ignoring the vexed issue of funding, the Lebanese Culture Minister Ghazi Al- Aridi spoke of the fair being "a test" of ability for each and every Arab country and called on those countries that have not participated to do so. Al-Munji Abu Snaina, the general coordinator of Arab Participation, stressed the fact that Arab presence is expected to be felt throughout Germany for a long time following the closing date of the fair, reassuring the public that numerous meetings and seminars have been going on; 187 authors and intellectuals with translated works, he said, would be contributing directly to one or more of the fair's activities. "The object," Al-Aridi went on, "is to make prominent the real image of the Arab world's past, present and future and our associations with concepts of dialogue [and] tolerance as much as to present outstanding Arab culture and thought." Mohamed Ghoniem, the executive director of Arab participation, was similarly evasive, focussing on the grandness of Arab civilisation and culture and the need to impart that grandness to the West. Only Ibrahim El-Moallem, the chairman of the Arab Publishers' Union, paid any attention to those "focussed, complex, confusing" issues that seem to preoccupy Linz. (The two publishers, it is worth mentioning, have been working closely together, organising managerial workshops and making plans for translations.) El-Moallem announced the availability, in the course of the fair, of an extensive display of children's books and art, all of which will be accompanied by the requisite information as to the content of the books and publishing rights. "Already," Egypt's leading private-sector publisher added, "steps have been taken towards translating books and selecting the most outstanding among them." Such, indeed, would be the more relevant task, considering the fact that, without such translations, the publishers with whom the Arab League organisers should hope to do business in Frankfurt -- and it is whether or not business is done that will make or break the guest of honour presentation -- have no way of judging the books at hand. Linz, whose experience in selling the translation rights of books by Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz in 33 languages has made him aware of the problematic dynamics of promoting Arabic literature abroad, believes that "until you have either the books or at least summaries available in a major European language", no real business can be done. "The real opportunity," he says, "is to break out dramatically into other language areas." Of the total number of books published globally every year, some 100,000, he points out, are translations; and of these an extremely small number is Arabic. "From the viewpoint of an international publisher, the question is how to inform yourself about Arabic literature without speaking Arabic," an issue that pertains not only to literary works but to nonfiction as well. "Of course there is the problem of finding adequate translators," Linz goes on, "because translating an Arabic book presents its own unique challenges. In many other countries there is a long tradition of translation, from English into German, say, but for the Arab world there isn't really a tradition. And it's a radically different culture. If a translation is to be successful, the translator has to somehow create a new world for most readers, and not simply render the meaning of what is said in the original. So despite the difficulty of making translations available, it can only be hoped that in Frankfurt information, dialogue and networking will take place. Arab representatives will have to speak languages, to be familiar with the processes of cultural exchange and to have written or translated books that are available in a European edition. "Besides which," Linz adds diplomatically, "if more is to be made of this time, people must realise that, unlike the Cairo Book Fair, Frankfurt is a highly professionalised event. It's not a place where you just go and see what's going on. It requires people to come together and do something together, which is already difficult on the political level. But preparation efforts I think are being discussed. I've taken all the initiative on behalf of the AUC Press, and we're holding several workshops here for publishers to prepare them for talking about topics like rights, co-editions and all the jargon terms. In collaboration with Ibrahim El-Moallem we're holding a series of workshops on six subjects over a period of two days. We want to invite publishers from other countries as well. Hopefully this will put at least some people in the right mind frame for the event. There is, of course, the other danger," the savvy German continues, "of becoming terribly inflated. It's an attitude that people sometimes develop," out of a sense of national pride, perhaps, "but it doesn't really fit in with the spirit of a fair where people get together to do serious business, where anything too grand is just hot air..." Aside from Linz's optimism -- a sentiment not shared by authors like El-Ghitani -- it remains to be seen whether last-minute organisational efforts will actually yield results, and to what extent the discourse of grandness will obstruct business interaction.
