Focus on youth literature in Istanbul Book Fair

Pakistan News & Features Services

‘My Childhood is my Homeland-Children’s and Youth Literature’ is the theme of the 31st International Istanbul Book Fair 2012, being organized by the TÜYAP Fair and Exhibition Organization at the TÜYAP Fair and Convention Centre in Büyükçekmece from November 17 to 25. The fair will host a series of distinguished writers and illustrators within the theme. 

Gülten Dayıoğlu, a Turkish children and youth literature author, has been chosen as the fair’s Honorary Writer, while the Country of Honour is the Netherlands. 

The fair will host more than 600 domestic and foreign publishers, non-governmental organizations, and copyright agencies. A workshop titled ‘digital publishing’ will be opened for the first time in the fair’s history. 

”In European book fairs, the themes are generally issues such as women rights, nature, and environmental concerns. They left behind the issues we are currently discussing in Turkey. They do not need to talk about the subjects like human rights anymore, since these rights are already guaranteed,” Deniz Kavukçuoğlu, Culture Fairs General Coordinator, TÜYAP, was quoted as saying. 

‘We want to follow the latest developments. The European fairs that we admired in the past now stay behind our book fair. They are organized in smaller areas and their numbers of visitors are less than ours. Recently, we went to the Barcelona Book Fair and it could be only compared to the Diyarbakır Book Fair in terms of its scale,” he pointed out. 

Kavukçuoğlu also mentioned about the demand for the Turkish literature abroad. 

“In the past you would never see a Turkish author on bookshelves abroad but now there are works by Orhan Pamuk, Elif Şafak and Yaşar Kemal,” he observed. 

The TÜYAP official noted that there was a great increase in number and variety of the books published in Turkey when compared to the past, adding that Turkey comes in the second place after France in this regard.