Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Muslim governments are getting busy boycotting the upcoming international book fair in Paris over its honoring of Israeli literature. Considering the dearth of book production and translation across the Muslim World, perhaps if these same governments spent a bit more energy opening up and encouraging creativity and expression among their populations someone might care.
The Wall Street Journal editorializes: Paris Book Burning
...Impromptu or official boycotts of Israeli commercial goods or national sports teams are nothing new. But the assault on words -- merely for being written in Hebrew by writers who happen to carry Israeli passports -- adds a revealing wrinkle to a familiar story...
I'm not sure that the loss of yet another reprint of Mein Kampf or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is really going to be noted as much of a loss. Come to think of it, more boycotts, please...
Maybe they just didn't have any new books to display.
In all seriousness, I was curious: how do new book publications, in Arabic, compare to Hebrew books published? (After all, let's face it -- very few people outside Israel read Hebrew-language textbooks or novels.)
Wikipedia has an answer of sorts -- Israel ranks 19th in the world, with nearly 7000 books published in 2006. The highest-ranked Arab country is Egypt (#26), with 2,215 in 1995 (the latest year for which figures are available). The next one is Syria in 32nd place -- which couldn't even hit four digits (598), and has no data more recent than 1992.
Oh, and the Palestinian Territories are listed in 51st place with 114... as of 1996.
Again, I wouldn't expect Israel to be a world leader here (as it is, for example, in high-tech, or in number of scientific papers published, or even in growth of new trees). After all, the demand for innovation in high-tech is worldwide; the demand for Hebrew-language potboilers is not. Nonetheless, I would not have expected Israel to out-publish, say, Australia -- never mind to do so eight to one!
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline