A lukewarm round with neither stars nor interesting debates, writes Mohamed Shoair on this year's Cairo Book Fair, despite the many positive achievements of the General Egyptian Book Organisation (GEBO) director Sabir Arab and his deputy Helmi El-Namnam in the brief period they have been in charge of the event The 42nd Cairo International Book Fair boasted no stars this year. The plan was to host the French Nobel laureate Jean- Marie Gustave Le Clézio, but he received the invitation to attend a few days before the opening -- apparently unbeknown to the fair organisers, Le Clézio (in common with the majority of literary celebrities, one would assume) plans his agenda a year in advance. This has placed the fair administration in a difficult position, as they could not cover up organisational faults the way they had done in the previous two rounds -- when they managed to host Orhan Pamuk and Ben Okri (who had been invited early enough in the day). Likewise Egyptian public figures: the writer Mohammad Hassanin Heikal, for example, has not been invited to participate in the fair for many years, although his presence this year might have saved the day. Seminars and symposia make up the principal activity of the book fair, and this year -- partly as a result of this, partly in the absence of any innovation or creativity -- have been as conventional and uninspiring as they get -- and, as always, nearly audience-less. It seems necessary to devise new ways of coordinating seminars in order to draw in an audience, yet no such effort was undertaken. Seminars revolved around three topics: the creative horizons of the Arab novel; the international financial crisis; and swine flu. Perhaps it is wrong to criticise the choice of topics, but what did the seminar on swine flu, for example, accomplish? It was a rerun of television talk shows which, like every official statement on the topic, failed to convince the audience even of the point of the vaccine -- a task the authorities had sought to accomplish for a long time. In the last few years, the late GEBO director Nasser El-Ansari -- who was technically responsible for this round -- attempted to remedy the organisational faults of this notoriously disorganised event, but in leaving the administration virtually to the security forces, he failed. State Security personnel body- searched visitors, cancelled many cultural activities, controlled the opening hours of various wings for fear of demonstrations, censored books, and eliminating the Cultural Cafe, which was a refuge for intellectuals in which to engage in discussion and debate in an atmosphere of freedom and to receive fellow writers from the Arab world. The security crack-down marred last year's round, resulting in numerous intellectuals and visitors keeping away from the fair and publishers complaining of low sales. This year, with the reopening of the Cultural Cafe and a significantly lighter security presence, the situation has improved somewhat. For the first time in many years, what is more, publishers have not on the whole complained of censorship; yet the dynamic of censorship remains a mystery: if not for the banning of Edriss Ali's novel Al-Zaim Yahliq Sha'rahu (The Leader Has A Hair Cut, 2009), the present round would have been more or less censorship-free. True, on this occasion censorship was exercised by the security forces, not (as has been the case) by censorship officials or Al-Azhar; but no doubt it has made a negative impact on the fair, especially in the light of the desire of GEBO officials to turn the fair into "a Hyde Park of the Aarb book", which drove them to file a request with the Information Ministry (the highest censorship authority in the state) to follow in the footsteps of the Saudi authorities, who suspend all censorship during the Jedda Book Fair while exercising it at other times. It was also interesting to see the Lebanese writer Ulwiyyah Subh's novel Issmuhu Al-Gharam (Its Name Is Love), which was censored a few weeks ago at the Diwan Bookshop, all over the bookshelves of Dar Al-Shurouk despite the fact that the novel's own publisher, Dar Al-Adab, could not carry it. This will be the last round of the book fair to be held at the fair grounds, perhaps the last book fair to look and feel like this. As of next year, the fair will be relocated to the conference hall, facilitating the demolition and rebuilding of the fair grounds in time for the return of the book fair in its 45th round. Will this event regain its vitality in the meantime, or even after the fair grounds are refurbished? That seems doubtful in the light of the fair being identical to every cultural and communications establishment in the post-July state: a progressive project was put forward as an excuse to control everything; the project soon vapourised, leaving the control behind. Aside from all this, however, the principal development the fair has witnessed has less to do with organisation and the administration than the book market. With a long buoyant religious book market unchanged, other popular titles have altered and so have their buyers. This is most evident in publishing houses well known for intellectual and political books, whose clientele is now clearly turning to literature. The biggest private-sector publisher, Dar Al-Shurouk, has turned to novels -- which now benefit from Al-Shurouk's sizable publicity machine at the expense of non-fiction books like those by Heikal, the late Farag Fouda or Nassr Hamed Abu-Zeid (which were often pitted against their non-secular counterparts, like the late Mohammad Metwalli El-Sha'rawi or the late Mohammad El-Ghazali). Today fair goers crowd around novels by the likes of Bahaa Taher, Khairi Shalabi, Gamal El-Ghitani or younger writers like Mansoura Ezzeddin, or else around bestsellers like those by Alaa El-Aswany or Essam Youssef. Be that as it may, the fair is in dire need of fresh imagination.
