The 34th Abu Dhabi International Book Fair (ADIBF) opened on April 26 with expanded programming and an expansion of global participants, with 1,400 exhibitors representing 96 countries. Of those nations, 20 are participating for the first time, including Mexico, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, Brazil, Armenia, Mongolia, and Singapore. There are a total of 28 international pavilions and some two dozen literary agents participating in a fellowship program and rights center, including the Astier-Pécher Literary & Film Agency from Paris, London's Books Everywhere, and the Helsinki Literary Agency, among others.

The fair, which runs through May 5, is expected to attract more than 150,000 visitors. This year's theme is "Knowledge Illuminates Our Community," and as such the programming heavily emphasizes the promotion of reading, with nearly every large cultural institution from the UAE, including some 15 universities and numerous libraries, taking part.

The fair's Guest of Honor program is highlighting the "Culture of the Caribbean Basin." The 11th-century philosopher-physician Ibn Sina (also known in the West as Avicenna) is featured as the fair's Focus Personality, while One Thousand and One Nights is being celebrated as this year's Book of the World, with dedicated sessions exploring its historical and cultural influence.

Among notable new attractions is Al Mutanabbi Street, a recreation of the famous bookselling street in Baghdad street which celebrates Iraqi literary heritage and features rare books and publishers; Poetry Nights Majlis, which brings together Arab and international poets to perform together; and Under the Ghaf's Shade, an open-air literary space where authors read and sign books.

The fair is also honoring six pioneering Arab publishing houses for their contributions to building Arab intellectual consciousness and enhancing the presence of Arab culture globally: Lebanon's Dar Sader (founded in 1863), Egypt's Dar Al Maarif (1890), Syria's Dar Al Fikr (1957), UAE's Dubai Library (1969), Kuwait's That Al Salasil (1972), and Jordan's Dar Al Shorok (1979).

In addition, the fair announced the launch of the Thaqafa Youth Prize for writers under the age of 30, which will offer publication of one novel and one scientific nonfiction work. The prize was launched in honor of the late Bassam Shabaro, founder of Lebanon's Arab Scientific Publishers, and Ali Obeid bin Hatem Al Balushi, partner in Dar Thaqafa for Publishing and Distributioon of the UAE.

Arabic literary translation remains challenging

Among the highlights of the first few days of the fair was a conversation with translator Katharine Halls about the challenge of trying to publish Arabic translations in English. Halls is the winner of the 2024 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation for her translation of Ahmed Naji's Rotten Evidence (McSweeney's, 2023), as well as the cofounder, along with Alice Guthrie, of 10/11, a literary agency focused on representing Arabic-language authors. Halls was joined in conversation by Samuel Shimon, cofounder of Banipal, the long-running magazine of contemporary Arabic literature in English translation.

Halls frequently described the obstacles facing interesting publishers in Arabic books as "near impossible." She cited the lack of Arabic-language readers at publishing houses as especially acute, and noted that it is not a problem that "faces French books, for example."

In discussing publishers' attitudes toward Arabic literature, Halls noted a gap in understanding, and emphasized the Arab world is a very big place, with hundreds of millions of people, and dozens of countries, all with different cultures. "Publishers think they know everything that there is from that place from news stories, but they don't—then translators and others have to jump in and fill in those gaps in knowledge," she said. "We give them what we've got, but we don't know it all either, of course."

For Arabic-language translation to truly flourish, Halls said, "translations should reflect the breadth of voices and experiences rather than narrow stereotypes." She also noted that even books that do adhere to what are flawed stereotypes, such as those about conflict, censorship, and imprisonment, are instructive, especially to readers in parts of the world where their freedoms have previously been taken for granted.

Both she and Shimon emphasized that prizes play a crucial role in gaining international recognition for translated works. Shimon used the prize of AED 750,000 ($204,000) that his publishing company, Banipal, won in 2020, after taking home the Sheikh Zayed Book Awards in the Publishing and Technology category, to launch as Spanish-language edition of the Banipal literary journal.

SZBA honor Arabic literary leaders, Murakami

This year's Sheikh Zayed Book Awards ceremony, held April 29, honored literary achievement across the Arab world. The awards, which are given in 10 categories, covered a wide range of topics from the evolution of Muslim women's rights to Arabic literary culture in Southeast Asia in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Ali Bin Tamim, secretary general of the awards and chairman of the Abu Dhabi Language Center, pointed out that the Awards—which were launched in 2006—have now seen 136 winners from 80 different countries. A total of 139 publishers have been represented and winning titles have been subsequently translated into 10 languages.

The Awards are also among the most generous in the world, now offering a total prize fund of AED 7,750,000 ($2.1 million), with each winner receiving AED 750,000 ($204,000) and the Cultural Personality of the Year receiving AED 1 million ($272,000).

The intention of the prize money is to serve as financial support to enable the writers to continue in their profession or take on challenges that might otherwise be beyond their means. For example, Marco Di Branco, who won this year's Translation Award for his English-language version of Orosius's Seven Books Against the Pagans—a classic historical text about the relationship between the Arabic world and ancient Greek and Roman history—plans to use his prize money to facilitate his work on a comprehensive, interactive encyclopedia on the topic. "It will be a project that may take me the rest of my life and will be a pinnacle of my work," he said.

This year saw the two main literary awards go to books that explored those people often misunderstood by society. Lebanese-French author Hoda Barkat won the Literature Award for her novel Hind or the Most Beautiful Woman in the World, a novel about a woman with acromegaly, while the Children's Literature Award went to Moroccan author Latifa Labsir for The Phantom of Sabiba, about a pair of siblings, one of whom is autistic.

This year also saw a rare appearance by Japanese author Haruki Murakami, who was named Cultural Personality of the Year. In a short speech, Ali Bin Tamim, secretary general of the awards and chairman of the Abu Dhabi Language Center, noted that Murakami found inspiration for his work in having read One Thousand and One Nights. "His work serves to connect our two cultures, both Asian and Arabic," Bin Tamim told PW.

In this acceptance speech, Murakami called winning the award "a great surprise and an immense honor." He added, "I have long believed that stories constitute a universal language. They are like seeds carried by the wind, scattered across the world. Wherever they land they take root in people's hearts, transcending cultural and linguistic boundaries to bloom into beautiful flowers. The young boy in Japan, upon reading One Thousand and One Nights, may come to know the joy of storytelling and perhaps, in time, grow to become a writer himself."