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An Interview With the President of the Frankfurt Book Fair
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Volker Neumann
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The
Arab world is the guest of honor at this round of the Frankfurt Book Fair, the
biggest book fair in the world, which will open in just a few days, on October
2.
IslamOnline.net
spoke to Volker Neumann, the president of the Frankfurt Book Fair, who took the
challenge of inviting the Arab World to introduce its literature and culture at
a time of intensifying political mayhem in the region while reporting from the
West is often troubled by cultural stereotyping.
IOL:
How do you see the preparations of the Arabs for the fair, and do you expect
them to be successful, especially after the heavy criticism from Arab and German
mass media?
Neumann:
I see excellent preparations from the Arab side. I’m actually very impressed
by their work and the program they have come up with. It shows me that they are
very professional. The organizing committee did a great job in a very short
time.
They
did not only take care of the events inside the Fair, but also of the whole
cultural and artistic program, which will continue in Germany throughout the
coming year.
As
a matter of fact, there were never such efforts and preparations from any
previous country guest of honor, especially because the Arab world did not have
as much time as the others to prepare. This can be understood if you know that,
when I took over the presidency of the Book Fair two years ago, the
administration of the fair were thinking about canceling the idea of the guest
of honor altogether and that Russia would be the final one, but I disagreed, as
I see the idea of having a guest of honor as a good and distinctive one.
Meanwhile
there were no signed contracts with any other country until the Arabs came up to
us and conveyed their readiness to take the challenge to prepare within that
very short period, so I cannot compare this participation to any other
country’s.
I
do expect a lot from the Arabs; the expectations are much more than the worries.
On the other hand, success depends on the Arabic side, the Arab publishers and
writers.
IOL:
Can you tell us more about what happened behind the scenes in the cooperation
process with the Arabs; did you play a role in choosing the authors who will
attend and did you have any comments on their program?
Neumann:
The process of cooperation was very easy-going and productive.
And
of course I played a role in shaping their program, but that was more a matter
of advising and consulting and not of forcing decisions.
In
fact, we were worried only authors who are classified as pro-government would be
invited, so we insisted on a different policy. We asked them to invite exiled
authors and opposition writers.
Here
we actually interfered and asked for their presence because they are part of the
Arab culture and they enjoy much respect and fame in the West. I’m talking
about such names as Gamal El-Ghitani, Sonallah Ibrahim, Rafik Shami, and, of
course, Naguib Mahfuz.
IOL:
Do you think that the fair will contribute to correcting the misunderstandings
between the Arabs and the West?
Neumann:
Sure, I believe in that because, in Germany and in Europe in general, we do not
know a lot about Arab culture, their points of view and their thoughts about the
future, so I am glad they chose “visions of the future” as the motto for
their participation. It is necessary to know about each other. This will give us
the chance to rediscover ourselves through discovering the other.
But
this book fair is not all; it is only the onset of the dialogue between East and
West and the point from which we will launch the dialogue between cultures. If
we take a look at the political situation in the world, we will find that we
need this dialogue and we need it now.
IOL:
Do you think that choosing the Arab world at this time carries any political
significance?
Neumann:
In the first place, we care about culture and arts, books, literature, and
theater, but culture cannot be separated from politics and the fair is not
unpolitical.
Our
dialogues and discussions during the fair will necessarily deal with
international politics and social issues as well as culture.
There
will also be debates on Islam and the other monotheistic religions. The fair
aims to contribute to breaking the ice between them. Of course, I do not expect
the Frankfurt Book Fair to be the grand peace treaty between religions and
cultures, but it will break the ice and open the door for dialogue and
understanding between them.
It
is just a beginning and we have to continue working on these issues after
Frankfurt and find ways to do so.
IOL:
Egypt recently announced a new initiative, supported by the Ministry of Culture,
for the translation of Arabic literature to other languages. What is your view
on this initiative and what about the translation of Arabic books into German?
Neumann:
This is a good initiative, of course, and we shall translate all the time and
not only because of that event.
The
German Foreign Ministry is interested in the Arabic culture and set a budget for
the translation of works from Arabic to German, but I think there has to be an
agreement between Arabs and Germans to activate the translation process. For our
part, we translate 12 books annually and we will contribute 200 translated books
in different fields to the event, such as works on Arab culture and society.
This is in addition to the translated books which will be brought by the Arabs.
There
are German institutions that work mainly in the field of Arab-German relations
and those organizations, such as the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the Annemarie
Schiemel forum and the Bronokreis Orgaziniation, will be part of the event.
IOL:
The German and Western mass media criticized the participation of the Arabs in
Frankfurt; did this criticism have any negative impact on your motivation?
Neumann:
There will always be criticism and it happened with every country that came as a
guest of honor. Of course the media discussed the many controversial issues with
regard to the Arab world, such as censorship, freedom of the press, the role of
women in society, and persecution of writers and their opinions, but as I said,
the expectations we have are much higher than the worries.
Fairoz
Mustafa is a journalist based in Cairo, Egypt
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