The New Frontier :: Arab Writers
Publishers seek new talent in Arab world
Alison Flood in Frankfurt and Ian Black
The Guardian
October 16 2008
Alexandria’s 21st century library Western publishers are launching a drive to tap the Arab world for new stars, hoping to bridge the language gap with more than 200 million native Arabic speakers – and make money from selling books.
Bloomsbury announced at the Frankfurt Book Fair yesterday that it is to launch a new Arabic-language publishing house, Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing, in partnership with the Gulf state. “The emphasis so far in Qatar has been on literacy, and our second challenge is how to move from literacy to literature to create a culture,” said Abdel-Rahman Azzam, a spokesman for Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al-Missned, the emir’s consort and the chair of the Qatar Foundation. [read more here]
