Publishers, writers watch from behind bars as Cairo Book Fair wraps
Egypt's restrictive cultural environment marred this year's Cairo International Book Fair with the recent arrests of publishers and closures of community libraries and bookstores.
With a record 900 publishers participating and a massive turnout of 3.5 million visitors, the 51st Cairo International Book Fair wrapped up on Feb. 4 and has been hailed by organizers as a resounding success. But it has also been criticized by free speech advocates for banning some controversial titles and excluding a number of publishers.
"The censorship at the [fair] is part of a wider state of repression and muzzling of free speech and expression in Egypt that has seen hundreds of websites blocked, community libraries shut down and dozens of journalists imprisoned in recent years for no crime other than expressing a dissenting viewpoint," lamented Gamal Eid, head of the Cairo-based Arabic Network for Human Rights Information.
Continuing a trend that started in 2015, books by some prominent members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood such as Sayyed Qutb, Hassan El Banna and Sheikh Youssef Qaradawi were absent from the shelves this year. The books were banned on grounds that they "spread radical ideology and sow sedition," according to Nancy Samir of the Egyptian General Book Organization, the organizer of the book fair.
She told Al-Monitor that there was an entire section devoted to Islamic books at the fair this year, but acknowledged that all participating publishers had been required to send in lists of the titles to be displayed ahead of the event.
