The Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL) announced in 2019 that the guest of honor in 2020 would be Sharjah, a hereditary monarchy with totalitarian features that hosts the largest editorial meeting in the Arab world.
But the pandemic delayed the plans until 2022. Finally, this Saturday begins the literary meeting that will last nine days.
Sharjah will arrive with a delegation of about 200 people and has planned some thirty literary, musical, gastronomic and outreach activities that show the friendliest face of the emirate.
Sharjah, with 1.6 million inhabitants, is one of the seven territories that make up the United Arab Emirates, with Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, and Umm al-Qaywayn.
The coffers of the country, which is the financial and commercial center of the region, are full of petrodollars.
Sharjah has been ruled since 1972 by Sultan bin Muhammad Al-Qasimi, 83, who came to the throne after the assassination of his brother.
A decade later, he founded a book fair that is today the most important in the Arab world: it brings together publishers from more than 80 countries and in 2021 had 1.6 million visitors.
The emirate, which in 2019 was distinguished by UNESCO as the World Book Capital, has positioned itself as the cultural center of the federation.
In its territory, for example, the first free zone for publishing, printing and business in the sector was created and since 2014 it has had a government entity designed "to support cultural exchange", the Book Authority.
The official government website highlights that it has been the sultan who has been "at the forefront of cultural development" in the emirate.
The monarch himself is the author of an extensive academic work -he is a historian-, literary and dramaturgical, and he has been awarded an
honorary doctorate
by universities in Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom or Portugal.
At the FIL in Guadalajara, a historical film that he wrote himself, Khorfakkan
, will be screened on Wednesday, November 30
, and that he also presented at film festivals such as Brussels or Istanbul.
The director of the Sharjah International Book Fair, Khoula Al Mujaini, highlighted during the presentation of the FIL program that the planned activities "prove Sharjah's commitment to books and events of global relevance."
Although the authorities of the emirate and the FIL emphasize that Sharjah is one of the "most progressive territories in the region" because the first school of the United Arab Emirates was founded there in 1907 and in 1942 it was the first emirate of the federation to allow women to study, international organizations have denounced "serious human rights violations" in the country.
international complaints
Human Rights Watch (HRW) criticized in its latest annual report that the United Arab Emirates authorities "prevented representatives of international human rights organizations and UN experts from conducting investigations in the country and from visiting prisons and detention centers."
The organization stated that dozens of activists, academics, and lawyers are serving sentences after "unfair trials" and assured that "arbitrary detentions, abuse of detainees, and forced deportations" continued in the country.
The organization also noted in the report that "discrimination against women continues in law and in practice" even though "some reforms have been made."
In the country, for example, men can divorce unilaterally, while women must apply for a court order to obtain a divorce.
The document also criticizes the lack of guarantees for foreign employees.
“Many low-paid migrant workers were highly vulnerable to forced labor,” the report says.
In summary, HRW warned that in the last year "the authorities of the United Arab Emirates continued to invest in a soft power strategy aimed at presenting the country as a progressive, tolerant and rights-respecting nation."
In this type of strategy, the promotion of culture and tourism, or sport plays an important role: while the 36th edition of the Guadalajara Book Fair begins, in Qatar, a country that penalizes homosexuality, despises women and mistreats immigrants, the World Cup is at stake.
The Sharjah delegation arriving at FIL is made up of approximately 200 people.
The organizers presented EL PAÍS with a list of 22 Emirati “authors and authors” “who will be present at FIL” made up of eight women and 14 men.
In addition, there will be writers from different Arab countries, such as Syria (the poet Adonis, exiled in France, or the writer Maram Al-Masri, who lives in Paris) or Oman (the writer Jokha Alharthi, winner of the Booker Prize in 2019).
In total, 57 works have been translated from Arabic into Spanish and will be available at the fair.
“Arabs are storytellers,” said Ahmed Al Ameri, chairman of the Sharjah Book Authority, during the programming launch.
"There is a great demand for literature here [in Sharjah]: works of fiction and non-fiction, poetry, manga... People here learn to love literature, and therefore we will continue to seek this type of cultural exchange," he added. Al Ameri, who avoided specifying the emirate's investment in the FIL: “It is important to us to arrive with our literature.
That is more important than money."
The president of the Book Authority assured that the objective of this meeting is "to connect Mexico and Sharjah through literature" even "after the Guadalajara book fair."
"We seek to strengthen relations with Mexico," he assured, "because there are many descendants of Arabs" in the North American country.
The organizers and guests have used a name to refer to the event that begins this Saturday in Guadalajara, a play on words and a reference to the Arab ancestry of the name of the Mexican city.
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