Sharjah shows the way

Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates was on high alert this year, thanks to the presence of Penguin Random House worldwide CEO Markus Dohle at both its Publishers’ Conference and the Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF).

The city, which was named Unesco World Book Capital in 2019, wanted to make a good impression and pulled out all the stops, taking him to see the magnificent House of Wisdom, the Norman Foster designed library and cultural centre that has a floating, cantilevered roof, and out into the desert to the archaeological site Mleiha where visitors walk across a glass floor beneath which lies the skeleton of a stallion, buried with a tribal dignitary.  It would have been so much better if, by magnificent coincidence, this stallion had been named Simon or Schuster, but sadly that is not the case.  However, there the creature lies, ready to gallop through the afterlife with its owner and, who knows, increase its market share in the process.

Sharjah Book Authority chairman Ahmed Al Ameri, under whose remit the publisher’s conference and SIBF fall, must be delighted since Dohle was clearly won over. Here is the c.e.o. interviewed on Sharjah’s Pulse 95 radio.  “I’m super impressed with the energy at this fair, the positive energy.  You can feel the region is growing, and the publishing industry in the region is growing and I’m super-impressed with the balance between local experiences and trying to sort of grow the local publishing business and complementing that with this huge international representation here.  I heard there are more than a 1,000 tables for agents and rights deals, and that is unprecedented, that is bigger than any other book fair in the world, so the energy is very, very high and it’s super exciting for me to be part of it.”

Ten years ago, the fair’s rights centre was one small room at the Chamber of Commerce. Now it occupies a giant marquee like a circus big top with around 1000 tables — a veritable Cirque du Soleil of rights

Earlier Dohle pronounced himself “super -disappointed” at the US court’s decision to block PRH’s proposed merger with Simon & Schuster (S&S), news which broke just in time for his "fireside" chat with International Publishing Association president Sheikha Bodour, who is also daughter of the ruler of Sharjah. It even allowed him some humour.  “Do you have a job for me?,” he asked her.  “I’m not sure I can return to the United States…”

Newcomers this year included Antonia Kasoulidou of PFD, who met with Egyptian publisher Sefsafa, among others, to discuss Arabic rights in the Booker-winner The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. Mohamed El-Baaly, Sefsafa’s c.e.o., said: “SIBF is becoming an important stop for rights. You can begin the conversation here, build communities and trust. And it’s a very important fair for those Arab publishers who don’t travel so much, who don’t go to Frankfurt. It’s a way for them to meet international publishers.”

Dohle toured the book fair, where PRH had a stand for the first time. Invite the c.e.o. and a stand comes as a bonus. New countries exhibiting this year included Costa Rica, Cuba, Hungary, Jamaica and Mali. There was also a typically fascinating display from Mayfair-based rare book dealer Peter Harrington that included an edition of T E Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom presented to his lieutenant, along with a cache of evocative black-and-white photographs and ephemera, redolent of the khaki nostalgia caught in the BBC’s "SAS: Rogue Heroes" drama. Yours for £175,000. 

Sharjah isn’t perfect of course; nowhere is. "If you attend or support any protest in which ’serious disruption to two or more individuals or to an organisation’ occurs, you can be forced to wear an electronic tag. ‘Serious disruption’ was redefined by the 2022 Police Act to include noise". This is grim, but this isn’t Sharjah, of course – it’s the UK, in a recent report in the Guardian.

Sharjah is damned if it does, damned if it doesn’t. So observers remark: “All those people at the rights tables – most of them have been flown there for free.” And if Sharjah didn’t do that – “Tuh, all that money it has. Why doesn’t it do something for books?”

Because it is an Arab country it is held up for more scrutiny than anywhere else. The renewed focus on Qatar and its shameful attitude toward gay people and its treatment of migrant workers, along with the detaining of the British-Egyptian pro-democracy activist Alaa Abdel Fattah in Cairo serve to cast a shadow over the whole region and stoke further cynicism and suspicion. There remains genuine concern over the treatment of bloggers in parts of the Arab world.

I travelled as a guest of the fair – as did many others, among them conference MC Richard Charkin – and once again it is hard not be impressed by what Al Ameri and his team have achieved. They have been ably assisted by Midas PR in previous years, and in recent months by help from the company’s co-founder Tony Mulliken, now acting solo. In the US, former S&S director of international sales Seth Russo works hard to bring authors and top publishing execs, such as Dohle, to the fair.

Ten years ago, the fair’s rights centre was one small room at the Chamber of Commerce. Now it occupies a giant marquee like a circus big top with, as Dohle correctly noted, around 1,000 tables, a veritable Cirque du Soleil of rights.

Sharjah seems happy; the people seem content, blessed by a ruler who puts books and culture first. His Highness Dr Sheikh Sulan bin Mumammad Al Qasimi has just given €50,000 towards the restoration of a fire-damaged children’s bookshop in Bologna, a gesture that follows similar help for three libraries damaged in the Beirut port explosion in 2020, as well as the restoration of a fire-damaged library in Conakry, Guinea, in 2018 and the funding of projects by Sheikha Bodour’s Kalimat Foundation which takes books into refugee camps.

His Highness remains unique among world leaders in his support for books and reading. As libraries face further cuts in the UK, one can only look on in wonder.