São Paulo – A delegation from Sharjah visited Brazil last week to prepare its participation in the 2018 São Paulo International Book Biennial, in which the emirate will be the guest of honor. The group was welcomed at the Brazilian Book Chamber (CBL) and defined that the Biennial will have music, dance, gastronomy and literature from the region.<\/p>\n
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Sharjah will have available a space with at least 500 square meters in the Biennial, plus an exhibition area, which could exhibit illustrations. The activities linked to the emirate will be in all of the event’s cultural spaces, according to the CBL’s manager of Foreign Affairs, Luiz Álvaro Salles Aguiar de Menezes.<\/p>\n
“The Sharjah emirate is an ambassador of the Arab culture throughout the world and that’s why it’s the guest of honor of the São Paulo International Book Biennial,” explains Menezes. The CBL organizes the event. <\/p>\n
Among the plans, the presence of Arab chefs cooking alongside Brazilian chefs at the gastronomy space “Cooking with Words,” Arab dances and music at the Cultural Arena and authors from the UAE and the region in the debate room Salon of Ideas, plus the exhibition of books. The details of the participation are not all set yet.<\/p>\n
Part of the works that Sharjah will bring to exhibit in the fair should be translated into Portuguese. Since last year, editors from Brazil and the UAE are talking, with one of the goals being the translation of books from Arab to Portuguese. <\/p>\n
CBL is organizing, alongside the Brazilian Trade and Investments Promotion Agency (Apex-Brasil), the program Brazilian Publishers, with the aim to expand the Brazilian sector to the global market. Under the initiative, many meetings between Brazilian and UAE editors took place and another should be held this year yet, at the Frankfurt Book Fair, in Germany, in October, and at the Sharjah International Book Fair, in the UAE, in November.<\/p>\n
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An event called Jornada Profissional (Business Round), which will include business matchmaking between publishing companies from Brazil and abroad, is scheduled to take place two days before the start of the book fair in São Paulo. According to Menezes, there will be 60 editors in attendance, half from Brazil and half from abroad. Ten of these editors will come from the UAE. <\/p>\n
The Sharjah delegation was in Brazil between August 24 and September 2. In addition to the activities in São Paulo, the group visited the Rio International Book Biennial, which started on August 31 and runs until September 10 in Rio de Janeiro. Menezes says that the event is comparable to the one in São Paulo, but that the latter is larger. The São Paulo International Book Biennial is Latin America’s largest book fair in audience, according to the manager.<\/p>\n
The Sharjah delegation in São Paulo included the president of the Sharjah Book Authority (SBA), Ahmed Alameri, the head of Foreign Affairs of the Emirates Publishers Association (EPA), Rawan Dabbas, plus Yousef Altaweel, from the communications area and stand designer Wean Ibrahum. At CBL, they were welcomed by Menezes, CBL’s president Luís Antonio Torelli and other professionals, such as director Fernanda Gomes Garcia, the Projects manager Cinthia Marcílio Favilla and CBL’s director of Foreign Affairs, Karine Pansa.<\/p>\n
The announcement of Sharjah as the guest of honor of the São Paulo International Book Biennial occurred in 2016 at the Frankfurt Book Fair. From then on, representatives from CBL and from Brazilian publishing companies met several times with representatives from the UAE and Sharjah publishing sectors. The biennial in São Paulo will be held from August 3 to 12 next year. The last edition, in 2016, attracted 684,000 visitors.<\/p>\n
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani<\/strong><\/p>\n