For four days in March every year, Leipzig — Germany’s ‘most liveable city’ — turns into a virtual podium and all the trams, quite literally, head towards ‘the messe’ (the fair). The Leipzig Book Fair may not be as well-known as the one in Frankfurt but it has its own distinction. It is the oldest book fair in Germany (the first fair was held here in the 17 century) and it is oriented differently. While the Frankfurt Book Fair is all about trade and business; at Leipzig, the consumer is the king (and the queen). The book fair is complemented by the reading festival (‘Leipzig Liest’; arguably Europe’s biggest reading festival) and together they account for four full days of breathless literary activity.
Leipzig Book Fair 2015 was held from March 12-15. While the book fair ran during the day at the expansive fairgrounds (which looked more like an international airport than Berlin’s Tegel Airport), the readings in the evening were held in everywhere and anywhere in the city — from traditional bookstores, cafes, and pubs and unusual locations like a barber shop, the local butcher’s, a prison house, and even a crematorium! The organisers made every effort to match the book’s setting with the venue of its reading.
Altogether, at this year’s fair and fest there were 410 reading locations, 3000 participants, 3200 events, 2263 book exhibitors from 42 countries, and more than 250,000 visitors. To mark “50 years of German-Israeli diplomatic relations”, the fair featured an exhibition on the relationship between the two countries and 40 authors from both nations, including celebrities like Günter Grass, Herta Müller, and Amos Oz, shared their views with the audience at 74 events.
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The presence of literary heavyweights notwithstanding, the first impression of the fair, however, was that this was more of a spectacle or a week-end picnic than a serious, intellectual or trade gathering. Visually, the most striking feature of the fair was the large number of young (and not-so-young) people in weird (aka imaginative) costumes promenading the venue and posing with supreme self-confidence for the shutterbugs. They were all at the fair (nearly 100,000 of them) for the Manga Comic Convention, which was held alongside the book fair for the second successive year. The popularity of these Japanese-origin comics can be gauged from the fact that nearly 300 exhibitors participated in the convention paying between €160-180 per sq.m. of display space.
The fair is not all fun and frolic, though. It serves the cause of the printed word, as the buzz created by the fair and the fest eventually translates into greater awareness and higher sales. Small, niche publishers get noticed, and big publishers bring out a large number of titles on the occasion, and newspapers carry special stories and reviews.
In fact, a notable feature of the Leipzig Book Fair was the enthusiastic participation of the media — print and electronic, public and private. Radio and television channels not only occupied prominent spaces at the fairgrounds but also organised a number of events — readings, panel discussions, and conversations — and broadcast them at prime time. Newspapers and magazines put out full-length book fair editions, and there were any number of netizens at the venue posting live updates on the social media.
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Other significant features of the fair and the fest include the total involvement of the citizens and the solid support of the state. Property owners volunteer to host readings on their premises and the whole city prepares itself to welcome the influx of visitors. The city and the state administration not only offer the massive fairgrounds for free but also extend support to small and institutional publishers. It was indeed heartening to see high-ranking officials and even ministers move around the venue unobtrusively, browsing books or listening to an author. It is not for nothing that the Germans consider reading their national sport and look upon their writers as national heroes.
However, there was a frustrating aspect also. All the fair- and fest-related material — the programme, site map, and even the signage at the venue — and all the readings were exclusively in German. Apparently, the organisers still see the fair and the fest as ‘local’ affairs, their international repute notwithstanding. In sharp contrast, everyone at the fair — from the young girls (wo)manning the information counters to those at the bookstalls — was willing and able to communicate in English with non-German speaking visitors. An amusing disconnect, indeed!
The writer, a Professor of English, Osmania University, and Director, Hyderabad Literary Festival, was at the Leipzig Book Fair at the invitation of The Goethe Institut, New Delhi.