The International Book Fair in Torino, the second largest Book Fair in Europe, has announced that Saudi Arabia will no longer be the guest of honour in its 2016 event. Instead, next year’s fair will focus on Arab Literature more broadly. This move breaks with the fair’s long tradition of hosting a different country each year, in close collaboration with the embassies and the ministry of culture of the guest countries.
It was almost midnight in Sydney and about 4pm in Sambuca in Sicily, when the Italian newsagency ANSA launched the news: “The organizers decided that the International Book Fair in Torino would not have an honoured guest next year, but would shift from a geopolitical to geo-cultural criteria” (ANSA, 6 October 2015).