The Coming Fair

This Thursday the 32 edition of the International Book Fair begins in Havana. The fair has Brazil as the Guest of Honor Country holding the opportunity to get closer to one of the most significant literary heritages of the region.

In fact, Brazil is practically a continent, geographically and culturally speaking.

The editorial proposal of the great South American nation includes a true update: several new works will be presented, by authors who are not well known in Cuba.

The cultural delegation of that country includes great writers, and also artists from other manifestations.

A multiple vision of the Brazilian heritage will be offered, focusing on the links with the Cuban tradition.

Other dedications

The founding work of Dr. Isabel Monal and the extraordinary professional work of writer and promoter Francisco López Sacha will be recognized in various spaces of the Fair, in a program that includes presentations of their books and theoretical sessions.

Several titles by the famous Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier will be made available to the public, whose birth reaches 120 years old; and there will be an approach from literature and historiography to the Father of Homeland, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, 150 years after his death.

The Fair, as is tradition, will not stay in Havana. When its capital and international stage concludes on February 25, it will spread to the provincial capitals, with activities that will mobilize writers and artists from each territory.

A Great Cultural Proposal

This edition will not be just like any other fair. The idea is for it to be, in some way, the Paradigm Change Fair.

No one should escape the fact that its celebration coincides with a very complex economic situation. Some, in fact, were inclined to reduce its impact.

But the Fair is a commitment to the preservation of the most emblematic events of Cuban culture.

The path is not to call it off, but to efficiently manage the resources available. And this call must influence the consolidation of new schemes for access to literature, which in addition to their cultural implications have an impact on the economic sphere.

The technological revolution has been a reality for a long time, but the Cuban publishing system has not fully taken advantage of its potential.

One of the great singularities of this event is the implementation of a perfectly functional system for the commercialization of the Cuban digital book, assuming that many of the readers have shifted to that format.

The Fair is also fully inserted in the processes of modernization of commercial operations: all paper books can be acquired through digital transactions, through current payment platforms.

It doesn’t mean, of course, that cash payment is discarded, but the most important thing will continue to be the cultural contribution of the book.

The Fair insists on its integrative calling, assuming literature as the basis of the entire artistic pyramid. It starts from the socializing capacity of art, as a pillar of the spiritual enrichment of citizens.

This year many of the proposals will leave conventional spaces and reach communities throughout the city, emulating the spirit of the famous phrase: if the mountain doesn’t go to Muhammad...

In any case, this democratizing spirit does not go against the strength of a literary program that will continue to press the aesthetic and conceptual challenges of contemporary literature.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff