Abu Dhabi Book Fair 2014

Posted by Nihat Can Koseoglu at 10:14 PM Labels: , , , No comments



Abu Dhabi Book Fair has started yesterday (April 30th, 2014) and will continue until May 5th in Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Center (ADNEC, www.adnec.ae).

This year, country guest of honor is Sweden so you get to meet some Swedish authors and taste some Swedish food at the Kitchen corner (see top left side of the picture above). By being the country guest of honor, I would expect Swedish books to be more under the highlight but I happened to see just a few stands with Swedish flag and the biggest was dedicated to toddlers.

Generally, it was quite a disappointment for us because we expect a lot more content in English (and Turkish of course). But, the majority of the fair is dedicated to Arabic books which is understandable because this is one of the biggest chances of the region to showcase their literature. Anyway, let's continue to be selfish. I expected to find some good novels in a language that I can read as well as some technical content, at least related to oil & gas or construction by being the heart and blood of this region.

The majority of the content in English was children books, mostly pre-school and primary school education sets, games etc. We managed to find a stand with English books which was the place where we spent most of our time in fair. Most of the content was related to WW II (see top right corner in above picture) but, I must say, there were plenty of good books in politics and history in that one. That was our favorite spot!

Our second favorite was of course the Turkey's podium which was having some novels, photography books and re-prints of some ancient books from the era of Ottoman Empire. Majority of the pictures above are taken there as you'd say. It was not much but it felt good to see something remind us our country. I would expect more private publishers to be represented in the event though.

Besides that, there are plenty of English language teaching books even for specific sectors such as law, oil&gas, healtcare etc. which is very good considering the quantum of Asian and middle-eastern expatriates working here.

It was not crowded in first evening of the event. It was very easy to find an empty slot in car park. 

To conclude, I would advise you to pay a visit to this nice event. Everybody could find something of interest in there. At least, you would see some literature in your native language. I'm pretty sure there is a lot that I missed out here. That's all from my point of view, you can find detailed information in official website.

http://www.adbookfair.com/



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