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FRANKFURT: The Frankfurt Book Fair began in muted fashion on Tuesday with global uncertainty and security fears casting a shadow over the world’s biggest publishing industry event.
Attacks on New York, arguably the publishing capital of the world, and Washington almost stopped the 53rd fair from going ahead, organizers said.
“Certainly we had to rethink after the attacks,” Book Fair director Lorenzo Rudolf told a news conference.
Fifty-four exhibitors pulled out because of recent events, among them 31 from the United States and six from Britain.
Repercussions from the attacks were evident in the increased security throughout the huge halls of the convention grounds in Germany’s financial capital.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was originally supposed to cut the ribbon but cancelled because he flew to the United States for talks with President George W. Bush.
WAR AND RELIGION: Many of the thousands of book submissions at the fair will focus on international relations, military history and religion as the event gets under way in earnest on Wednesday.
Books about terrorism and the Middle East are expected to be in high demand during the fair and there are plans to stage forums to discuss publishing in the Middle East.
Among the books being launched at the fair dealing with recent events is “Tuesday, September 11, 2001”, which compiles writing by Paul Auster, Toni Morrison, John Updike and others about the attacks.
Industry experts will use the fair to examine some of the problems facing the electronic publishing industry since the crisis which hit the New Economy during the last 12 months.
Sure to cause a stir is a book which says that Adolf Hitler had homosexual friendships in the 1920s and that the Nazi dictator’s later life can only be understood by taking into account his gay preferences.
Lothar Machtan, modern history professor at Bremen University, will launch his book “Hitler’s Secret — the Double Life of a Dictator”, in which he hopes to shed new light on old speculation that Hitler was a closet homosexual. —Reuters
