Gulf states are now spending billions to become cultural powerhouses. There is a glitch, however: politics
in the Middle East do the censors get their own stand at book fairs—as they did at last year’s jamboree in Kuwait. Outside, a frustrated local artist installed a mock cemetery of banned works, with hundreds of titles inscribed on headstones. Over the past five years the information ministry has banned more than 4,000 books, from Dostoevsky to “Children of Gebelawi”, published in 1959 by the Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz, the only Arab to win the Nobel prize for literature.
Still, the book market in the Gulf is certainly big. Saudi Arabia’s alone is thought to be worth 5bn rials a year. Residents of oil- and gas-rich emirates have more to spend on literature than other Arabs. The market in theis estimated at $233m, larger than similar-sized European countries like Hungary or Portugal. Egypt has ten times more people than theThe fairs appeal to governments as well.
There is a glitch, however: politics. Visitors to the Louvre in Abu Dhabi are given a tour through 8,000 years of human history, with an upbeat message of progress and optimism—but little that is challenging. The same goes for the Riyadh book fair, which is less a festival of intellectual freedom than a showcase for official policy.
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