Main features of 50th Cairo International Book Fair

CAIRO – 10 July 2018: The Golden Jubilee of Cairo International Book Fair, set to be held in Ard el-Maared, Nasr City, in 2019, has chosen the Arab League as the guest of honor of the book fair.

Also, great writer and ex Minister of Culture, Tharwat Okasha, and late great writer Soheir al-Kalamawi are set to be figures of the year in the 50th edition of the book fair.

Haitham el-Hag, head of the Egyptian General Authority for Books, announced that Serbia is participating for the first time in the Cairo International Book Fair's Golden Jubilee.

Furthermore, Hag stated that agreements between officials from Egypt and Serbia on cultural exchange have been made.

Hag continued that Egypt is supposed to participate for the first time in Belgrade’s International Book Fair in 2018 and 2019 and will be the fair’s Guest of honor in 2020.

Hag finally stated that Cyprus is also participating for the first time in the Book Fair’s Golden Jubilee.

Additional efforts are exerted to get Senegal to participate in the next Egyptian fairs.
It is worth mentioning that 27 countries, including 17 Arab countries and 10 foreign countries participated in the 49th Cairo International Book Fair, which ran from January 27 to February 10.

The late veteran writer Abdel Rahaman el-Sharakawy was chosen as figure of the year because he participated in the renewal of religious discourse, in addition to being a renowned theatrical writer.

The Ministry of Education coordinated the first week of the second semester in tandem with the book fair’s second week as a “Reading Week”.

The art camp of the 49th edition bore the name of late great Egyptian artist Shadia.

The 49th edition poster was designed by the book fair’s permanent committee, in collaboration with the Egyptian Fine Arts Sector.

Algeria has been chosen as a guest of honor in the 49th edition, after Egypt was chosen as a guest of honor for a similar fair in Algeria last year. About 10 percent of the participating publishing houses are Algerian.

The publishing houses' participation in the 49th edition of Cairo International Book Fair marked a 120 percent increase compared to the previous year, where about 144 new publishing houses participated in the book fair for the first time.

The 49th edition hosted a lot of new activities for the first time, such as establishing theaters, cinema halls and fine arts halls, in addition to increasing the number of children books.