The Great Belgrade Book Fair, Part I

The Great Belgrade Book Fair

The last week in October is a great time for every book lover in Belgrade, Serbia -- and not just in Belgrade, people from other cities and countries come too. It is the time of the Belgrade Book Fair. The big publishing houses are all present, but the Fair doesn't mean all that much to them, they have other ways of selling books. However, it is the time when the small publishing houses manage to earn some money (typically used to pay their debts), and thus survive in the market.

As for the readers, it is the time when they can find a lot of books from the domestic and foreign publishing houses, some of them rare and old and otherwise difficult to find, and the prices are lower than the usual.

And, you get to look at a lot of books at one place.

I went to the Book Fair yesterday and will probably be going again tomorrow and on Friday. I bought 8 books: 30. februar by Jelena Đurović (she is a former University colleague and the novel is part science fiction, part romance, part poitical satire), Vrtovi nestvarnog by Sava Damjanov (the title translates to The Gardens of Unreal, it is a book of essays about Serbian fantastic literature), All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy, Goethe schtirbt by Thomas Bernhard (stories which haven't been translated to English yet), Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon, Abraxas' Guide Down the Documentary Movie, 2nd edition by Bojan Pandža (weird, bizarre documentary movies, serial killers, Zeitgeist...), his blog is here, it's a great place if you want to download various interesting documentary movies), a book about No and Kabuki theater, and Last Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko (a Russian urban fantasy). What made me very happy was finally getting my hands on my copy of another translation of mine, this one is a book of essays by Norman Spinrad, I translated two of them (two essays, not two Spinrads :) ).

Other than seeing a lot of books, which is always a joy, it's great to see dear people I know there -- and it happens every year, because we're all book lovers. One of them bought my book, which is another great thing; since we happened to be there at the same time, she got her copy signed.

Going to the Belgrade Book Fair was a great pleasure -- and there will be more of that pleasure in the days to come. I look forward to it.

My book is there!

P.S. If it doesn't seem crowded to you, it's because i went early, while most people are still at work; the big crowd comes later, making it difficult to see the books and sometimes even to move.




Here are some more pictures, just for you!

Portugal is the special guest this year.

Come back soon, there will be more!