Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka will open this year’s Cape Town Book Fair, which runs from July 31 to August 2. Soyinka, who in 1986 became the first African to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, is also a prominent African activist. He will use the fair to relaunch his memoirs, You Must Set Forth at Dawn (Ayebia), which originally came out in 2006.
This year’s fair has 220 exhibitors from 31 countries. But one of the major talking points is the largest stand, taken by first-time attendees, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), represented by the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (Adach). The delegation includes representatives from the emirate’s national library, a body that translates works from the rest of the world into Arabic, and the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair.
Claudia Kaiser, the book fair director, is euphoric. She says the Adach’s presence is “significant in growing the fair in terms of trade”.
There is a pre-fair day on July 30 dedicated to the publishing trade and a session at which publishers will be introduced to one another.
There is a conscious effort to make this fair more African, something Zimbabwe’s book fair did very well before the political and economic crisis put out its fire. To this end, the Goethe-Institut made grants available to 15 publishers from sub-Saharan Africa, enabling them to attend.
Among the fair highlights will be the 2010 M-Net Literary Awards. Now in their 19th year, the awards received 100 novels for consideration in several categories.
M-Net will showcase literature published between January and December last year in any of South Africa’s official languages. The awards feature a segment for fiction that could be adapted for film by M-Net.
Novels shortlisted in the main category (African languages) include Ga di Mphelele by MS Machitela in Sepedi, Ga Llwe ke Mahlale by MP Mathete in Sesotho, Lingada Zibuyile Endle by P Mtuze in isiXhosa, Tshedza Tsho Tovhowa by K Mukovhanama in Tshivenda and Zindala Zombile by PB Vilakazi in isiZulu.
The main fiction category includes works such as To Heaven by Water by Justin Cartwright, JM Coetzee’s Summertime, High Low In-between by Imraan Coovadia, Small Moving Parts by Sally-Ann Murray and Little Ice Cream Boy by Jacques Pauw, which is also under consideration for the film category prize.
Pauw’s aside, books that made the shortlist for the film prize include: Refuge by Andrew Brown, The October Killings by Wessel Ebersohn, My Brother’s Keeper by Jassy MacKenzie and Black Diamond by Zakes Mda.
Hettie Scholtz, chairperson of the M-Net Literary Awards, says the judging panel was impressed by the works.
“It also came as a pleasant surprise that so many thrillers and suspense novels were entered — the surprise stemming from the authors’ writing prowess,” she says.
The winners will be announced on Saturday July 31.
In a bid to attract more visitors the book fair is offering a 50% discount to bookstore loyalty club members.
Kaiser says: “We are very happy to offer this discount to visitors to this year’s fair. It’s a way for us to pay tribute to book-lovers.”
Nice gesture, but whether it will draw first-time visitors is a moot point, as Cape Town-based holders of these cards (read Exclusive Books shoppers) would have gone to the fair anyway.
Last year was rather trying for the fair: Jacana Media balked at having a stand at the fair, which was followed by the publishing house’s staff almost being evicted from the venue, the Jozi Book Fair was launched in Gauteng, the province with the largest consumers of books, and Cape Town Book Fair founding managing director Vanessa Badroodien left. All this stoked rumours that perhaps 2009’s fair would be the last. But maybe the presence of Soyinka, the UAE delegation and the contingent of African publishers means the worst has been averted.