Pakistan News & Features Services
The Pakistan Pavilion at the 31st Sharjah International Book Fair 2012 (SIBF), set up by a private company, is reported to have displayed more than 8,000 titles the majority of which were in Urdu language.
“The Pakistani Pavilion is a chance to grab many popular Urdu books, there’s not that many of them in the United Arab Emirates UAE. The pavilion has lots of English titles as well, the pictorial books are doing great,” one of the organizers of the pavilion was quoted as saying.
“There’s a full variety of Pakistan-published books here politics, fiction, children’s, poetry, religion, newspapers, magazines. You name it, we’ve got it. Outside the book fair, you won’t find this much of a selection,” he added.
He estimated there were more than 50,000 individual copies at the pavilion, being offered at special fair prices.
The SIBF 2012, held at the famous Sharjah Expo Centre, featured 385,000 titles from more than 920 publishers, with over 60 countries participating with an awesome variety of categories and languages there.
Pakistan was chosen the Country of Focus during the SIBF, which was inaugurated on November 7.
But the decision seems to have been taken belatedly or it was communicated at an advanced stage, which deprived the Pakistan publishing industry the chance of making a big statement.
Although 22 Pakistani publishers did take part in the SIBF 2012, which was higher than an average of four or five in the earlier years, the participation could have been greater if the management of the Fair made the announcement publicly many months before the event.
It was a bit surprising than an organization like the Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF), having grown in stature over the years, didn’t formally announce the declaration of Pakistan as the Country of Focus.
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