Yemen celebrates International Book Day

Yemenis celebrate International Book Day by encouraging literacy through a low priced book fair.

Last week, the Ministry of Culture and the Public Book Authority (PBA) held a book fair in al-Tahrir Square in honor of International Book Day. Their aim was to provide books on sale for a very low price in an attempt to encourage more people to read.

The launch of this book fair coincides with the International Day of Literature, April 23. This day is a symbolic day in world literature and was declared as International Day of the Book by UNESCO in 1995 as a celebration of books and literature that draws its inspiration from a Catalan tradition, the Festival of the Rose. 

“Yemen celebrates International Book Day in its own way by holding a book fair. In this book fair, books are showed with low prices in order to encourage youths and children to read and enable them to buy books,” said Mohammed al-Maflahi, Minister of Culture. 

He says that Yemen joins the whole world to celebrate this day because of the importance of literature and books and its serious role in developing countries. 

Fares al-Saqqaf, the Director of PBA, also declared this day that the first basic stone of the biggest cultural project in Yemen will be done in May 22 of this year. “Celebrating this day is a thankful to the role played by the book,” he said. The title of the project is “Books for All” and will include many different types of literature and books offered free to students to read in this project.

Nabeel Obadi, the Director of Yemeni Union for Publishers (YUP), emphasized showing books to readers in order to enable them to read. “Holding this exhibition is the real launch of YUP,” he says. 

He also pointed out that publishing institutions make prices of books extremely low in order to be in the hands of readers. According to him, reading in an open camp, not in a hall, is the effective way to connect between readers and books.  Participants of this exhibition did their best in order to show these books in low prices, he adds. 

“The author in Yemen is mistreated because he does not get money for his hard work in order to write a book, pointing out that publishers do not pay much for the author unless he is sure that the income of the book is good enough,” Obadi tells al-Jazeera. 

More than 15 publishing institutions and libraries took part in this exhibition, which consisted of political, culture, religious and children books. This exhibition lasted for four days. 

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