Muscat, February 28: Book fairs are hot events these days in the Gulf region. For all book lovers, the 15th edition of the Muscat International Book Fair was opened on 23rd of February under the auspices of the Minister of Heritage and Culture Sayyid Haitham Ibn Tariq Al Said, a senior member of the Omani royal family who was accompanied by other prominent ministers and a high-ranking officials.
Hamad Al- Rashdi, the Minister of Information, and Abdul Aziz Al Rowas, the Sultan’s Advisor for Cultural Affairs were also present in another sign of the weight given to the book fair.
Marking the beginning of the book fair, a book titled Words Faith was launched by Sayyid Haitham in front of national and international media. Forty Omani writers have their contributions in the book which talks about the forty years of the Renaissance of the Sultanate.
Oman is marking the 40th anniversary of Sultan Qaboos ascending to the throne this year.
Over fifty publishing houses from Oman are taking part in the book fair. They include the Publishing House of the Ministries of Information, Heritage and Culture, Education, Justice, Awqaf (Endowments) and Religious Studies, Sultan Qaboos University as well as private publishers from various parts of the world.
Over 35,000 books were published during the last two years by around 500 publishers from twenty-seven Arab countries. Non Arab countries publications are also on display in the fair.
If one is bibliophile and in Muscat then the annual book fair, a real world of books, is the place to head to. This huge literary exercise, which involves the official organs indicated previously, is expanding at a significant rate.
The fair is one of the highlights of the calendar of events in Oman and therefore it proved to be a suitable platform for the launch of Words Faith.
Publishing such a book reflects the importance which the government attaches to the promotion and the encouragement of literary standards among Omani writers.
Many of the country’s aspiring poets and writers need this kind of support for developing their talents and making a worthwhile contribution to the march for acknowledge-based society.
By engaging its youth in the reading habits, Oman, which has a rich cultural and historical legacy, is investing in its future generations.
Among the thousands of titles on display at the Muscat Book Fair are also eight books that have been short-listed for the International Prize for Arabic Section. This prize, also known as the Arabic Booker and awarded by Emirate Foundation in Abu Dhabi, is to encourage budding writers of Arabic prose.
What is also noteworthy and an inspiration at this year’s book fair is that one of the halls in the exhibition centre has been named after Ahmed Ibn Majid, the legendary Arab navigator and writer who assisted the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama in finding find his way from Africa to India.
He wrote several books, including Kitab Al-Fawaid fi Usul Ilm Al-Bahr wal Qawaid, which is the book of Useful Information and Rules of Navigations written 1490.
The Minister of Culture and Heritage expressed his delight at the fact that foreign countries, as far away as Japan, Singapore and Sweden, participated in this significant event.
Hamad Al-Rashdi, the Minister of Information, assures the participants in the opening ceremony that digital books are a concrete reality of life and that they are here to stay.
The cultural programme of the fair includes lectures, poetry-evenings, and other events arranged by Omani theatre circles.
—Agencies