Right from Brexit, the attempted coup in Turkey, armed conflict in Syria, refugee crisis and populist tendencies in Europe to the election campaign in the USA—this year, political events are sure to dominate conversations at the Frankfurt Book Fair if not form part of panel discussions. After all, “Europe!” is this year’s slogan for Weltempfang, the book fair’s cultural political platform in Hall 3.1. “Since a purely economic approach to the European project clearly doesn’t have the necessary integrative power, we’d like to launch new discussions about substantive issues,” said Juergen Boos, director of the Frankfurt Book Fair, at a press conference in Frankfurt on 15 September 2016. “We don’t want these discussions to take the form of navel-gazing by member states, but rather to incorporate current events and perspectives from around the globe and, in particular, debates about values such as freedom of speech and publication.” Boualem Sansal, Elif Shafak, Daniel CohnBendit, Ian Kershaw, Herfried Münkler, Timothy Garton Ash and Bernhard Pörksen are just a few of the prominent thinkers and academics who will help shape the programme in the Weltempfang – Centre for Politics, Literature and Translation.
The Frankfurt Book Fair’s guest of honour this year provides an excellent example of how we can overcome borders and, together, focus on similarities in 2016. For this year, the guest of honour in Frankfurt isn’t a nation but a linguistic and cultural region. Flanders and the Netherlands’ exceptionally high number of new releases attests to how actively and successfully they have worked together—422 titles in a wide range of genres, including literary fiction, non-fiction, poetry, children’s and young adult literature, comics and graphic novels. Compare this to the annual average of 85 new translations published in the Germanspeaking world in recent years.
Just four weeks before the start of the Frankfurt Book Fair, it looks as though the number of exhibitors will be roughly the same as last year, while a slightly higher number of trade visitors is expected. The Frankfurt Book Fair shows strong growth in the field of children’s and young adult books, one of the best-performing segments in the industry worldwide. A new area for international children’s and young adult publishers in Halls 5.1 and 6.1 will bring together 300 publishers, including many first-time exhibitors. Yet children’s and young adult books aren’t the only booming area for rights and licensing—460 tables have been sold in the Literary Agents & Scouts Centre (LitAg), and 692 agents from 31 countries will represent their authors here.
The awards an author receives are another measure of his or her importance and international standing. A new collaboration with the Man Booker Prize, one of the most important literary prizes in the English-speaking world, highlights outstanding literary voices—a number of which are expected in Frankfurt. The prize will be awarded in London on 25 October 2016. “There’s no doubt that the Man Booker is special, recognized as one of the most sought-after awards worldwide,” says Boos. “Winning it can lead to an enormous increase in sales—to say nothing of the potential for the sale of foreign, television and film rights. There’s no better place than the Frankfurt Book Fair for industry pros to initiate business talks.”
