Day by day the Ministry of culture announces the number of visitors to the Book Fair which is held in the Fifth Settlement after it was in the Nasr City area near The Book Fair metro station.
On its ninth day, the ministry announced that half a million are hitting at the place there. The entry ticket is five pounds and the transport ticket is ten pounds.
Though the number is huge and almost half a million visit the fair and the halls are packed like sardines, still the books purchases operation is down as the paper price has doubled in the last year. Now a packet of white paper is worth 200 hundred pounds on Amazon and not in the fifties any longer within a year.
In comparison; Arabic book prices shouldn’t cost an arm and leg as much as the foreign ones either English, French, Dutch, or manga/comic novels, etc. In the past before Mr. Dollar jumped over 15 pounds, a single English book would play around one hundred pounds. The classics would retain at 35 pounds and Arabic has its way in the twenties. At the book fair at that time, a bunch of at least six English books would cost only 200 pounds. The big book store’s names really offered a 50 percent reduction. School libraries would garb it as a chance to fill their shelves with the latest top-notch novels that “hit the best New York Times sellers’ list” encouraging students to borrow books/novels to read them and hand a review about them.
At the moment, the table is turned around and such luxurious old days are no longer existing in nowadays reality!
As the fair’s land is so huge, food stores and kiosks are getting endless queues. The food is still affordable. A couple of food types are worth half the book price. People would capture the book fair as a chance to meet up with their friends, have a quick look at the books as if they are picturesque portraits displayed in museums and then run to fill their stomachs with the tastiest food.
I guess the social media videos in the coming days will compete about food tastes rather than book recommendations and prices at the fair!
Many newspapers take this fair seriously and interview authors who published books about heated topics in cultural and political fields. The story/article would be long showing how rich and insightful it is. However, not a single youth would care about who published what at this fair!
As regular, many cultural meetings and conferences are never meant to stop. They are always conducted by authors, culture leaders, and other influencers to engage readers and young information seekers to tune in with their ideas and hear their opinions regarding some topics.
Unfortunately, that’s the reality of literature. In the end, not the numbers that will show a real value. It is the true practical side of what’s literally happening!
