The 25th annual Salon du Livre wrapped up Saturday, overcoming a few stumbling blocks but ultimately declaring a success.
This year’s theme, “Technology,” seemed to have little effect on bookstores present, while startups in the field said they were well received at the festival.
After a week of signings, presentations, talks and panel discussions, the Francophone book fair’s organizers are pleased with the outcome and many of the participating bookstores believe they benefited from the experience.
“This 2018 edition was great,” Salon organizer Marielle Salloum informed The Daily Star. “Our visitors gave us a lot of compliments. The program was especially rich, especially for the youngest [visitors], with many workshops for children, Zyriab culinary workshops and challenging debates.”
This year’s festival was hosted at the and relocated BIEL, which caused some disruptions. Many at the festival noticed a slow start to the week, saying this was due to confusion, with many still thinking BIEL is at Beirut Waterfront.
Bookshops braced themselves for a rough year in the sales department, citing the ever-deteriorating Lebanese economy as the main cause for concern. This proved to be true in some cases, though the hit was not as hard as expected.
“Despite the economic crisis and the new space, we had a successful year.” Librairie Antoine’s French literature manager Malke Lahoud told The Daily Star. “At the beginning there were less people because they were not used to the new location. Toward the end there were more [visitors].” Despite a tough economic situation, the number of visitors stayed constant in comparison to previous years.
“More than 70,000 [guests attended], almost as much as last year, which was a record year,” Salloum said. “This is an excellent result in a difficult economic and social context and in a new place.”
The theme of “Technology” did not have the negative effect on sales many bookstores thought it would, believing many readers still prefer hard copies over e-books.
Anticipating the theme, many bookstores set out to offer books on technology, though this was not as well received by the public. Books on technology also did not seem to spark the interest of many readers.
“We did a big table of books about technology. They did not sell very well,” Le Point bookstore assistant manager Jhinwa Asmar said.
However, tech startups at the fair said they were well received by the public. This was especially true for the younger festival goers.
“It was a daring bet to bring the digital wolf into the mountains of writing. But again, the choice more than paid off,” Salloum said. “For 10 days, the public, [and especially the younger generation] came to discover the products of Lebanese startups in the digital field.”
“It was very good for us,” said Reina Lebreton, co-founder of bmb Smart, a programming academy in Lebanon. “We were happy to see people that were interested. We did presentations with the little ones and they were very interested [in coding].” Topics such as the Middle East, Syria, politics and religion were more popular with those perusing for their next read or presented in talks and discussions.
“The roundtables that most interested the Lebanese public concerned major debates about society and the regional situation,” Salloum said. “For example, the debates on Saudi Arabia with Christine Ockrent, on Michel Chiba, or on the end of life [were popular.]”
Alongside the wide interest range of many buyers, French-Lebanese writer Ghata Khoury and French novelist Katherine Pancol were among the much sought-after authors last week.
The Salon du Livre was also the setting for a number of French literature awards, one of them being Le Choix Goncourt de l’Orient. The winning book, “Frere d’Ame” by David Diop was announced Thursday at the festival by a student jury of 37 judges from 33 universities, in 12 MENA region countries.
Born in Paris and raised in Senegal, David Diop’s book is about a Senegalese soldier fighting under the French flag in World War I. The violent and bloody tale explores the idea of good and evil within the main character, as the reader follows a hero soldier turned merciless killer in a wild series of events.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
