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Book Lovers Spoilt for Choice at Fair

ABU DHABI - Red carpet rolled, flowers and ribbon in place, Arabian scent burning. At 10am on Tuesday, the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair was ready to open its doors for the 19th time.

Soon after, Shaikh Abdulla bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Shaikh Sultan bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan, Chairman of Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage, walked through the doors of Abu Dhabi Exhibition Centre, where the fair takes place.

For the next couple of hours, they had a look at the 637 exhibitors, some looking more colourful than others, some attracting more interest and others surprising with unusual titles.

Bookshelves filled with literature, poetry, scientific subjects, history, art and even food recipes, all written in Arabic, English, Scandinavian languages, Hindi, French, Chinese, German, Slovakian or Japanese are all eye-catching, but a few truly stand out from the crowd.

Among them “Earth,” published by the Australian Millennium House, is an encyclopedia containing maps and essays on culture, history, politics and heritage of 194 countries of the world.

Apart from the standard atlas size books and the limited imperial gold edition, displaying its latest limited edition, was the Earth — Blue.

The 19th of only 2000 copies of the limited edition, the Earth — Blue, was signed by Shaikh Abdulla during the opening of ADIBF and it will be donated to a charity, most likely to Red Crescent, who could auction it for a lot more than its standard price of Dh 15,000.

Rare manuscripts dating back to the 14th century or Arabic writers translated into European languages are all here to delight, while books that are not books are making the fair all the more interesting.

Stashed up from small to big and from grey to yellow, stonebooks are sculptures created by the German artist Sebastian Schmidt — the only artist present at ADIBF.

“I exhibited at the Frankfurt book fair last October and the Abu Dhabi delegation saw my work and invited me here,” said Schmidt.

His work, varying from pocket size “books” to around 30 cm tall are made of limestone and granites from many parts of the world, from Iran  to Greece.

As the book fair opened its doors to the public at 5pm — the morning was reserved for traders only — fun events livened up the place and even more book lovers started to walk in.

The first German poetry was ‘acted’ in the Textbox, the first chefs presented their experience in writing recipes, and the award winning Indian writer Amitav Ghosh walked in to sign copies of his novels, including the first volume of his epic trilogy of the first Opium War, unfolded in North India and the Bay of Bengal in 1838, the “Sea of Poppies”, published last year.

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