That’s the way to the top
Mmust be reoriented: where Diogenes, Suhrkamp, S. Fischer or Rowohlt used to be for decades, there is now someone else whose new location is better not even noticed, because in the coming year after the renovation of Hall 5 has been completed everything will be mixed up again . That’s why many big exhibitors this year forgo individual stand architecture and use faceless “system stands” – interchangeable exhibition space off the shelf. And so it is hardly noticeable that you walk past a small Hanser stand, although the big one has already been tracked down somewhere else. The same with CH Beck or Loewe. When asked, one learns: The small ones are “workstations” for conversations undisturbed by the hustle and bustle of visitors. Suddenly you see them everywhere. Cleverly done by the trade fair: double rental fills gaps.
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branches everywhere
In the center of the fair, in the inner courtyard in the rain, is a very small booth. Two young women ask in: “You don’t know what Tiktok is either?” Older people might think that you could find out the time here, a kind of world clock in the tent. But this is of course about the most popular social media giant at the moment, more precisely: about its offspring Booktok. Here, influencers receive tips on how to use the power of the community to get books to number 1 on the bestseller list. At the top of the shelf: Tracy Wolff’s fantasy series “Crave”. But then the two young women explain to an older woman that “old books” could also get that far with the Booktok push. We listen up: so classics? Well, almost: The examples given are then Benedict Wells and Hanya Yanagihara.
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Learning from Velázquez
Guest of Honor at the Book Fair: First and foremost, that means presenting oneself on the stage of the world interested in literature and thinking carefully about the image one presents. This includes promoting, years in advance, translations that represent the literature of the host country, and when it goes well, the reader falls in love with a handful of books you might never have come across otherwise. The oath is taken in the guest country pavilion, the showcase of the respective country. And in the courtyard of the fair, where you’ve already seen folk dance groups and tourist commercials on huge monitors. So now partitions with Spanish paintings, including “Las Meninas” by Diego Velázquez, as if to remind us that a wealth of perspectives, mirror surfaces and playing with the recipient are also good for literature.
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Nothing new from the New Right
Haven’t heard anything about the presence of new right publishers at the book fair this time? Well, if no one else is upset, the trade fair itself makes it a topic: in the Frankfurt Pavilion. “How strong is our democracy really?” asked Boussa Thiam there, and the author Mohamed Amjahid criticized the fact that freedom of expression in Germany is so broad that right-wing publishers are given a place at the book fair, which is not the case in view of the racist and right-wing extremist content be durable. The political scientist Nicole Deitelhoff responded with a reference to the importance of discourse and conflict: In order to research where the limits of what is acceptable lie, an offensive examination of forms of discrimination is needed. The book fair does indeed create space for discourse in a multifaceted form.
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