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Festivities draw big names in world literature
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THE Shanghai Book Fair will enter its 13th year with a guest list filled with winners of top international literary awards like the Nobel Prize, Pulitzer Prize, T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry and the Hugo Prize.
Centered on the theme of “Love Reading, Love Life,” this year’s fair will be held at Shanghai Exhibition Center between August 17 and 23.
This year’s event will include an expanded range of children’s books and events, continuing a trend seen in recent years. Dozens of workshops and activities focused on young readers will take place throughout the week.
With digital technologies reshaping the way people read and shop for books, many publishers and vendors are looking forward to the fair to showcase themselves and their newest works. More than 500 publishers are expected to host more than 700 events at the fair, including lectures, book signings, cultural dialogues and workshops. Additionally, there will be more than 150,000 new books on display.
“I don’t really go to bookstores anymore since I mostly buy books online, and even read some books online. But I have been going to the book fair for the past five years, and I plan to go this year and in the years to come too,” says Felix Yang, a financial analyst in his late 20s.
“It’s one of the few opportunities to indulge in culture and books. It always feels so nostalgic to see all the writers, books and events going on at the exhibition center.”
A report on the reading habits of Shanghai residents released earlier this month showed that about 60 percent of readers still prefer printed books, saying they provide the best reading experience, while only 16.5 percent prefer digital editions.
The report, released annually by Shanghai Press and Publication Bureau, also indicates Shanghai residents read 6.61 books a year, and spend 16 to 60 minutes on reading every day.
International flare
Like Yang, many younger readers are more exposed to foreign literature than the older generation and have great expectations for the International Literary Week, which has become a regular component of the book fair.
Belarusian investigative journalist Svetlana Alexievich, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature last year “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time,” will attend the literary week.
She was the first Belarusian writer and the first journalist to receive the top literary award. A collection of her works, including the acclaimed “Chernobyl Prayer: Voices from Chernobyl,” “Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from a Forgotten War” and “War’s Unwomanly Face,” were published in translation last November. This will be her second visit to China, after she came with a former Soviet Union writers’ delegation in 1989.
It is also the second China visit for Dominican-American writer Junot Diaz, who came in 2010 when “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” was translated and published. The novel, on which he spent 11 years writing, has garnered him a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and has been selected in various literary lists as one of the best novels in the 21st century.
The writer also became a MacArthur Fellow in 2012. The fellowship, known as the “Genius Grant,” aims to pick out creative talents in various fields. There is no application process for this award; one can only be nominated. In the Shanghai event, the Dominican native will discuss his career as a novelist and fiction writer, as well as his thoughts on writing and identity.
Book fair organizers will also open a new event series this year, the International Poetry Festival. The festival will invite poets from all over the world to read, write and share with each other.
Among them, British poet and playwright Sean O’Brien and American poet Sharon Olds, both recipients of the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, among many other top poetry awards, will co-host a talk entitled “T.S. Eliot in Shanghai.”
‘Beautiful bookshops’
Another new event is the photo exhibition “The Most Beautiful Bookshops in Shanghai,” which aims to help support the development of the city’s brick-and-mortar bookstores.
Many bookstores in Shanghai have struggled to survive in the digital era, especially as rents across the city continue to surge. The situation has improved somewhat in recent years, thanks in part to financial and policy support aimed at rescuing local book purveyors.
Bookshops have become smaller and more multifunctional as cultural spaces, luring readers back not only for their books, but also for the cultural ambience and events.
The winning photos of 17 bookshops were selected from nearly 1,700 in the competition, and will be exhibited during the book fair.
A talk by American author and screenwriter Gabrielle Zevin will be a good match to the exhibition, considering she has written the best-selling novel “The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry,” about a middle-aged bookshop owner who loses his most precious rare book.
The Chinese edition was a bestseller last year, and Zevin will attend the book fair to talk with Chinese writers about the future of books, bookstores and book appreciation.
Shanghai Book Fair
Date: August 17-23, 9am-9pm
Venue: Shanghai Exhibition Center, 1000 Yan’an Rd M.
Admission: 10 yuan
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