KITAB is launching a new private membership club for Abu Dhabi’s literati: The Abu Dhabi Literature and Publishers Club. The Club, which was conceived of by ADIBF managing director Monika Kruass, made its official debut yesterday with its inaugural event, a book launch for the German language edition of the seminal history of the UAE, […]

I returned earlier this evening from a KITAB sofa session with the Algerian-Italian author Amara Lakhous and his one-time Italian translator, Francesco Leggio. Lakhous’ career illustrates basically the full rainbow of translation possibilities. Born in Algiers, he studied philosophy before moving to Rome in the mid-1990s to get his Ph.D. in anthropology. He’s been based […]

For the first time in ADIBF history, the Book Fair organized a special “Market Focus” day to highlight the publishing scene and literary culture of Algeria. With good reason–although the Algerian private publishing industry is relatively young, it’s growing rapidly. 
The key event in this one-day Focus on the Algerian Book Market was an overview presentation by Yassar Arafat Qana from […]

The ability to adapt and evolve is the key to survival, said Dr. Marco Olavarria of the German management consultancy Kirchner & Robrech, during  a Friday afternoon seminar with the provocative title, “How Not to Be a Dinosaur.”“We’ve had an exciting decade of change, but that’s nothing like what is coming up,” he said citing […]

Another major force for change has been online social networking, which is also taking off in the Arabic-speaking world. In a morning session on Thursday, Farid Gasim, director of operations, MENA, for Dubai-based Internet consultancy Grafdom, hails from Azerbaijan, spoke at the ADIBF E-zone and offered some tips about the how to take advantage of […]

Ralph Mollers, publisher of Terzio, is making his first visit to the ADIBF, and says it has been “a good experience,” for him. “We publish children’s books and produce educational materials in Germany, but since they are so expensive compared with the Chinese imports, so we’re not expecting to do any business in that sense. […]