Open 10 am-8 pm (closing 10 pm on Thursday and Friday), the fair brings together 1,400 exhibitors displaying and selling their wares in six exhibition halls and features discussions and events.
At present books are being shipped to the CIBF both from within Egypt and abroad. According to Sherif Bakr, the head of Al-Arabi Press, “this step is much better organised now there is a dedicated company that takes charge of moving the books from the publishers’ to their assigned space at the fair, to avoid an otherwise very messy process.”
This is Bakr’s 29th year at the fair, and nearly three decades’ worth of experience tells him “things have improved very significantly.” The fact that the present venue is remote compared to Nasr City’s Cairo International Exhibition Centre – where the CIBF had been held since 1984, when the original venue in Zamalek became the Opera House (Cairo’s second) – is no longer an issue for the public, Bakr says. Though overblown in the first year, it was in fact a minor adjustment, and it had happened the first time round too.
The first Cairo International Book Fair opened in 1969 with the participation of 32 countries. This year, 83 countries are participating, with Romania as the guest of honour, to coincide with the 120th anniversary of diplomatic relations with Egypt. Al-Arabi’s contribution to Romanian literature in Arabic translation this year is George Arion’s 1983 Attack in the Library, appearing in time for the fair. This, Bakr says, is part of an increasing tendency to expand the scope of literatures in translation, supplementing English, French and Russian works with African, Asian and Nordic titles. Other publishers agree. Khaled Loutfy from Tanmia Press stresses the abiding interest in Latin American literature.
This year, Bakr is offering a new book by Ari Turunen, editor-in-chief of the Finnish edition of Le Monde Diplomatique and bestselling author of, among other books, A History of Arrogance. The present volume, about authoritarian populists, is still not available in English, and it marks a shift in Al-Arabi’s approach as the translation was partly made using AI.
“When we translate authors whose original language has very few speakers in the country, we resort to comparing the Arabic with the English, the French or even the German translation,” Bakr explains.
At times, the translation is made from one of those languages. For Turunen’s new book, the process was different: “First we translated Turunen’s book from Finnish into English; we shared the AI-produced translation with him, and he was very satisfied; then we translated the English text into Arabic.”
Last year, Bakr had used AI translation to produce drafts of both an English book in Arabic and an Arabic book in English to test it. “In both cases, the result proved totally inadequate, and it required a great deal of editing,” he says. This year, however, the robot had improved significantly; it easily managed to obtain a useful English draft of an Arabic text to offer foreign publishers. That is what encouraged him to work on Turunen’s book in this way. “Egyptian readers are very interested in being introduced to diverse foreign authors, whether of fiction or non-fiction,” he says, “and with the help of the AI, maybe we can go places we have never been before.”
Many publishers have high hopes for fiction in translation. Khaled Lotfy of Tanmia Press says the success of Chilean novelist Marcela Serrano’s Ten Women two years ago prompted the publication, this year, of her The Sanctuary of Heartbroken Women. “I will argue that translations of books from Latin America, especially in fiction, are still the most popular among Egyptian readers,” Lotfy says.
But there is an increasing appetite for titles from Asia and Eastern Europe as well, he adds. For Bakr, this is in part due to social media and streaming platforms such as Netflix, which have exposed readers to cultures from across the world.
Both agree that, while the interest is broad, crime, horror and self-development are especially popular at the fair.
“These are the topics that interest Gen Z,” Lotfy said, who comprise the majority of CIBF visitors.
“Actually, I think the vast majority of sales at CIBF are to this generation that is very eager to learn and expand its horizons,” he added.
Bakr also stressed self-development and AI: “These are the topics that interest the new generation.”
For her part, Rabab Fouad of Dar Al-Fouad took things a step further. She’s offering a series of brief histories on the kings of ancient Egypt. “Again,” she says, “this is essentially for the younger reader, maybe young adults who got curious about ancient Egyptian civilisation when they saw the 2021 Golden Pharaohs’ Parade and the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum in 2025.” But catering to the demands of the market is not every publisher’s priority.
Karam Youssef of Al-Kotob Khan Press, for example, is committed to her own preferences: literature, history and biography. “I don’t deny it,” she says. “People will venture into our space at CIBF and ask for crime, horror and romantic titles.”
But there remains enough of an interest in the kind of books she champions, too. Last year at CIBF, her bestsellers included historian Lucie Ryzova’s The Age of the Effendiyya: Passages to Modernity in National-Colonial Egypt and novelist Adel Esmat’s Fi Nihayat Al-Zaman (“At the End of Time”).
This year, she is publishing books on two legendary 20th-century figures: singer-actress Laila Mourad (1918-1995) and filmmaker Youssef Chahine (1926-2008), written by Hanan Hammad and Bassel Ramsis, respectively. “They actually offer an insight into the life and societal norms of Egypt in the 20th century.” Hammad’s book, originally published in English in 2022, was translated by Basma Naguie. Al-Kotob Khan is also offering books on Jean-Paul Sartre and Winston Churchill as well as Naguie’s own debut fiction, Sirat Dhi’b Abir (“Biography of a Transitory Wolf”).
Insisting that new genres do not undermine the staples of the industry, Mahmoud Abdel-Nabi of Ibiidi Press agrees that history and fiction remain abidingly popular, not just at CIBF but across Arab book fairs. This year, Ibiidi is publishing a new biography of the 12th-century theologian Abu Hamid Al- Ghazali and a collection of novel reviews by the critic Mahmoud Abdel-Shakour.
Ibiidi is also starting a new series, Kunouz (or Treasures), reprinting new and revised editions of popular classics like Khalil Gibran’s 1923 The Prophet and the 11th-century Andalusian polymath Ibn Hazm’s treatise on love, The Ring of the Dove. There are a total of eight titles this year.
Mohamed Al-Serssawy of Al-Mahrousa, the press is publishing books on HADETO (the acronym for Democratic Movement for National Liberation, the large-scale communist organisation established in 1947), and the vastly influential literary magazine Gallery 68. But many publishers feel that novels remain the secret of sales at CIBF.
As Lotfy puts it: “It is true that during the past few years there has been an increasing interest in non-fiction, but fiction is still king, whether produced in Arabic by Egyptian or other Arab writers, or translated into it. I think that the interesting thing about the sales of literature, especially by Arab and Egyptian writers, is the fact that there is a growing appetite for new authors.” In the past few years, several young novelists have managed to make a mark.
For Fatma Al-Boudy of Dar Al-Ein, this year, both short stories and poetry are making a comeback. “I think at a moment when people feel frustrated,” she says, “they search for something life-affirming – poetry is certainly there to help in this way.” Poetry and short stories had been marginalised for a long time, but their comeback has been in the making for a few years. Al-Boudy is also monitoring the continued interest in books on urban and architectural history, following the huge success of architectural historians Nizar Al-Sayyad and Hassan Hafez’s Monarchic Cairo.
With a significant increase in the rent of CIBF space, finances are a major concern for publishers. Considering that this will lead to a higher cover price, according to Rabab Fouad, it is a challenging situation. With ambitious plans to introduce new writers, publish Arab authors and experiment with new genres, Fouad is concerned that finances are going to prevent her from carrying it all out. “Publishing itself is becoming more and more expensive with paper prices jumping from EGP 3,000 in 2013 to EGP 70,000 per tonne this year.”
This year, Lotfy concurs, the rental rates have increased threefold. “Obviously, CIBF rental rates are still much lower than those of book fairs in most Arab countries, but there is always a question about the impact of this bigger cost on the prices of the books.” The increased cost, he says, is not just rental rates and the raw materials but the whole process, including staff salaries, writers’ and designers’ payment, storage and transport.
“It is very true that during the past few years, the publishing industry in Egypt has grown significantly, not just with the introduction of new publishers but also with the expansion and the diversity of products,” Lotfy said. But it has also become a lot more expensive. All in all, publishers feel CIBF remains the unchallenged top annual event for books all across the Arab world, though it is in the Arabian Gulf fairs that they make most of their profit. But addressing the financial issue is in the interest of readers in Egypt.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 15 January, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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