The Japanese bookstore, Kinokuniya – the largest bookstore in the UAE – is set to celebrate its tenth anniversary in Dubai. The Dubai Mall branch representing one of 26 branches across the world, offers a wide range of books to visitors with over half a million titles in Arabic, English, Japanese, French, German and Chinese, in addition to magazines, stationery items and creative gift options.
Kinokuniya opened its first bookstore in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo, and soon after opened several other branches in Japan due to the overwhelming success it achieved. In 1969, it opened its first foreign branch in San Francisco, USA, and later opened other branches in several American states, along with more in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan and Australia.
Kinokuniya Dubai offers a wide variety of comic books and magazines, mostly in English and Japanese, characterised by an extensive collection of the Manga genre. It also offers books in Arabic and organises monthly cultural events that are popular among the public. In the last two years, Kinokuniya Dubai has started online sales in order to facilitate access to more people across the UAE.
Gurnah Highlights Shared Humanity at SFAL 2025
One of the highlights of the inaugural Sharjah Festival of African Literature (SFAL) 2025 was Nobel Prize-winning author Abdulrazak Gurnah’s captivating Book Talk session on day two. The session, led by Emirati writer Eman Al Yousef, focused on Gurnah’s novel “Afterlives,” probing migration, displacement, and colonial scars in East Africa. Gurnah emphasised how stories entangle […]