BOOK WORLD PRAGUE 2012 – international book fair and literary festivalWith its accompanying literary festival and international reach, Book World Prague is the largest event for books in the Czech Republic. Over four days visitors can acquaint themselves with practically every producer of books on the Czech market; this concerns primarily fiction, but also the publishing activities of most university presses and publishers of specialist literature. Altogether about 400 exhibitors from more than 30 countries and regions from all over the world are represented at the fair. Guest of honour at next year’s fair will be Romania. It is the intention of the fair organizers and the guest of honour to familiarize visitors with not only Romanian literature but also the literature of the Black Sea region. The participation and programme of the guest of honour is prepared in cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Romania, the Romanian Cultural Institute in Prague and the Ministry of Culture of Romania. Naturally cooperation is assured with leading scholars and translators from the Czech Republic who specialize in the languages, history and culture of this region. Alongside the programme focusing on the literature of Romania and the Black Sea region, the fair will welcome exhibitors, writers and other professionals from many countries from all over the world. Also involved in the preparation of the fair are European centres for literature and organizations that work together in the Literature without Borders scheme, the European Union of National Institutes for Culture (as part of the ‘Literature Night’ project), Goethe-Institut, the Austrian Cultural Forum and the Swiss Confederation (as part of the ‘Das Buch’ project), cultural missions from abroad and embassies in the Czech Republic. Writers and other specialists from the Czech Republic and abroad will appear at a variety of discussion fora and author’s readings. Book World Prague supports the work of translators, publishers and other figures of world literature from the Czech Republic and abroad and seeks to present them in a nationwide context. The central theme of the 2012 fair will be the comics There will be exhibitions, seminars and meetings with authors active in a genre of literature that is currently attracting a great deal of interest, not least from the younger generation of readers. The Book World Prague fair is also very popular with the general reading public; the number of visitors to the fair is regularly around the 40,000 mark. Within the literary festival the organizers offer a wide range of programmes including specialist seminars and conferences, meetings with writers and author’s readings, the presentation of publishing houses, and the recognition of editorial and creative achievements. The accompanying programme includes the film festival Book World in Film and the theatre festival Book World on the Stage, which present works inspired by literature, and, for the fourth year, Cooking with the Book, which gives practical demonstrations of interesting books on cooking. Every year various prizes are awarded at the fair. This year’s fair saw the first conferral of the Jiri Theiner Award, a new literature prize given by the fair’s organizers to an individual or institution operating abroad who or which by their or its acts or long-term endeavours has made a significant contribution to the dissemination and promotion of Czech literature abroad. The 2011 laureate is Polish scholar of Czech, translator and journalist Andrzej Jagodzinski; nominations for next year’s award are now being accepted. www.svetknihy.cz |
