Sayed Mahmoud reports from the Abu Dhabi Book Fair I entered the 19th Abu Dhabi International Book Fair -- a week-long event which folded last Sunday -- in the company of publisher Ibrahim El-Muallim, the head of the Arab Publishers Union, and the novelist Gamal El-Ghitani. Glancing at the surroundings, Muallim asked rhetorically why Egypt could not organise a fair at the same standard of organisation and cleanliness. "It seems you don't want that to happen," I responded, referring to the people in charge, but Muallim put me down with a confident smile: "Journalists including yourself make a point of attacking us every time we call for the fair being organised by a private company, liberated from the hegemony of bureaucracy in the culture ministry. It's the terror of privatisation, sir," he added. But it was left to Ghitani to arrive at a pithy conclusion: "Not a single scrap of paper indicates that anyone has stepped over these grounds." It was the kind of statement that could summarise the proceedings -- spick-and-span, but somewhat too insular for comfort. With 637 publishing houses representing 52 states, this was the biggest round of the fair to date, according to the UAE media. Since 2007, the fair has been organised by a company named Kitab (Book), a collaborative initiative of the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage and the Frankfurt Book Fair, which might explain the strong resemblance in the infrastructure of the two fairs. Under the rubric of the Authority's Qalam (Pen) project, five books by Emiratis are to appear in German in time for the next Frankfurt Book Fair, while Lisan, the Swiss-based magazine of Arabic literature in German, edited by Hassan Hammad, devoted its last issue -- prominently displayed at the fair -- to contemporary Emirati writing. Likewise the seminar programme, entitled Spotlights on Publishing Rights: focussing on the business of creating books, the fair sought to draw in the greatest concentration of big names in the fields of publishing and literature. It seemed appropriate in the light of the UAE being the only country in the Middle East to have appeared in the top-20 list for the lowest copyright infringement rates. Among the main topics were women in the publishing industry and the e-book market in the Arab world. The multinational audience -- mostly South Asian, Arab and Western -- contributed to the success of the fair, with the administration seizing the opportunity to promote Arab heritage: a special exhibition of old Arabic books, unprecedented in Arab book fairs, was among the event's most impressive highlights. Despite the pervasive presence of guides, maps and other means to finding your way, with the sheer magnitude of the event, losing ones way was inevitable. More problematic was the scarcity of the audience, with the bulk made up of school children. Only a rare few were interested in literary and intellectual books. (It is to remedy this fault, perhaps, that the Emirates Foundation has embarked on a project to translate Emirati literature into Urdu.) The magnitude of translation initiatives was impressive, with a range of Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation displays, including the Arabs Library project (the first comprehensive electronic portal for Arabic books, including 1,194 books, 4,081 biographies, 500 reviews and seven dictionaries, with many interactive features), alongside the Abu Dhabi Authority's Kalima. The Foundation also launched the project Ten Books in One, in addition to ongoing projects like A Book in a Capsule and the Tarjim (Translate) and Uktub (Write) initiatives. The foundation also held special children's writing events, some including instant prizes, which made its wing stand out. Other initiatives, notably by the Emirates Foundation, made the fair a magnet to Arab publishers in search of funding. Along the lines of Frankfurt, the fair has less to do with book sales as such than publishing deals, notably between UAE institutions and financially exhausted publishing houses from elsewhere in the Arab world. Attractions went beyond translations of contemporary literature into Arabic, with Arabic literature in English making an appearance at the American University in Cairo Press, which launched Denys Johnson Davies' new book of selected short stories by Emirati writers. Among the more remarkable events was the Book Club patronised by Emirati and expatriate Arab women living in the Emirates, Nadi Kutub Al-Multaqa, which is registered with the UNESCO and whose seminars in honour of the Egyptian writer Mohammad El-Bisati and the Tunisian writer Habib Al-Salmi I attended. The idea, according the founder of the club Asmaa Saddig Al-Mutawi', is to provide a space for Emirati women to have literary and intellectual debates. "The club usually takes the form of a private salon at my house," she explained, "to which I invite woman writers and journalists. This time, however, with the aim of promoting our work, the club has been opened to the public for the duration of the fair." For the PR director at the American University in Cairo Press, Nabila Aql, the club embodies "a pioneering and astounding move". More visibly, children had the lion's share of activities with a highly sophisticated booth for the well-known Emirati children's magazine, Majid, and 1,000 bags each containing ten Kalima translations aimed at children distributed free of charge on the orders of the project's patron Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan. But perhaps the most exciting attraction during my three days at the fair were the book signings, featuring Amitav Gosh, presenting his latest novel, Sea of Poppies, and the Cooking Corner -- perhaps the fair's most popular outlet -- where celebrity chefs not only signed their recipe books but presented the audience with mouth- watering dishes produced before their eyes on the premises.
