The Ministry of Culture, through the Directorate of Arts and Letters, with resources from the Recovery Fund, participates for the second time, with a National Booth, in the 43rd International Book Fair of Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates, from November 6 to 17, 2024. At the invitation of the organizers, it will also participate in the three-day 14th Sharjah International Publishers’ Conference, which precedes the “trade” exhibition (3-5 November 2024), at the Sharjah Expo Centre, under the motto “Everything starts with a book”.

Sharjah hosts the third largest book fair in the world, the most important in the Arab world. Last year’s event showcased 15 million books from 2,023 publishers from 109 countries and hosted more than 2,000 cultural events. At the National Booth, the Ministry of Culture presents the publications of the Ministry of Culture and its supervised institutions, more than 500 publications in Greek and other languages. Also, translated books published under the GreekLit programme of the Hellenic Book and Culture Foundation, a body supervised by the Ministry of Culture, which subsidises translations in every category of Greek book production. Furthermore, 39 publishers, cultural organisations, cultural institutions, publishing houses and institutions that publish translations of Greek books are presented.

The Greek events are held in cooperation with the Embassy of Greece in Abu Dhabi, foreign and Greek publishers and institutions of Greek interests in the UAE. Participants include Dr. Khalef Raouf, translator of Greek Literature, Wael Abdel Qader, publisher (JUSUR, Publishing&Distributing), poets Thanasis Hatzopoulos (State Literary Poetry Award) Antonis Skiathas, Member of the Board of Directors of the Hellenic Book and Culture Foundation (ELIVIP), Vassiliki Kotini, Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistic Studies, Zayed University, the award-winning Emirati poet, artist, screenwriter and film director Nujoom Alghanem and Sissy Papathanasiou, Head of the Directorate of Letters, Ministry of Culture.

The programme includes presentations of Arabic translations of the books by Iakovos Kambanellis, “The Courtyard of Miracles” and Antonis Samarakis, “Short Stories”, which were published in the framework of the Literary Years organised by the Ministry of Culture, as well as a discussion on the forthcoming anthology “Greek Poetry 20th-21st century”. The translation and editing of the volume was undertaken by Roni Bou Saba, Professor of Arabic at the School of Foreign Languages, University of Athens, in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture’s Directorate of Letters. The anthology presents a total of fifty-three distinguished Greek poets – most of them translated into Arabic for the first time – whose work has been honoured with Literary Awards of the country ,reflecting all literary trends, generations and tendencies of contemporary Greek poetry, from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day.