Introduction

Minister of Culture Dr. Shaker Abdel-Hamid will inaugurate on 22 January 2012 the 43rd edition of the Cairo International Book Fair as the first international cultural event to be held in Egypt since the outbreak of the revolution on 25 January 2011. The Fair will run from 22 January till 7 February 2012 in the exhibitions ground in Nasr City with the participation of 745 publishers representing 29 Arab and foreign countries. Up to 17 Arab countries will take part in the Fair, to celebrate the Arab Spring revolutions, in addition to 12 foreign countries.

The Cairo International Book Fair is one of the oldest and largest book fairs in the Middle East. It is one of the prominent places bringing together different peoples to exchange viewpoints on various topics. The Fair offers opportunities for free exchange of books in the Middle East and aims at getting the public acquainted with the latest modes of thought and printed matters along with signing publishing and distribution agreements. The Fair also helps remove obstacles before book marketing through exchanging the rights to publishing, translation and copyright and grant publishing licenses to the Middle East region.

The Fair encourages discussing the recent methods that facilitate disseminating culture and thought and provides an opportunity to exchange expertise among publishers, book sellers, writers, businessmen, university professors and Arab and international organizations.

Last year's Fair was held in August 2011in Faisal district due to the difficulty of holding it in the Cairo International Conferences Center after the outbreak of the revolution.

The idea of holding the fair came up in 1969 as a national Arab project that brings together the Arab countries under the umbrella of science and knowledge. That fair was attended by 47 countries and 462 publishers and it displayed 100, 000 books from different countries. The then culture minister Dr. Tharwat Okasha assigned Dr. Sahir al-Kalamwai, the then chairman of the General Egyptian Authority for Writing and Publishing, to supervise holding the first book fair in Egypt.

Growing year after year, the Fair became an important event in our Egyptian and Arab cultural life.