Dr. Abdullah Al-Maghlouth, Director of Government Communication Center, and official spokesman of the Riyadh International Book Fair, has confirmed that nearly 912,000 visitors came to the book fair this year, including 2,700 participants at cultural events, 12,000 who attended lectures and 18,000 children who took part in activities at the Child Pavillion.
Exhibitors at the fair, which ran from March 14-24, included 520 Saudi, Arab and international publishers from 27 countries who were among those who sold a total of 340,701 books during the 11-day event.
Official figures show that the rundown of publishers was 31% from Saudi Arabia, 23% from Egypt, 14% from Lebanon, 10% from Jordan, 5% from the UAE – the fair’s Country of Honour – and 4% from Kuwait.
A total of 984 people participated in the exhibition’s unique ‘Translation Marathon’, during which 364 participants succeeded in translating 293 articles into English and 49 articles into French.
As Country of Honour, UAE institutions organised a number of talks, cultural events, activities and performances reflecting the rich intellectual and cultural heritage of the nation, which were attended by several ministers, officials and academics, as well as UAE publishing houses, which presented their latest publications.