DOHA: The Qatar International Exhibition Centre was packed on Saturday, the last day of the 19th Doha International Book Fair.
"We had a good turnout this year. The crowd and the number of stalls were bigger," said Dr Khalid Al Halabi, consultant at the Department of Public Libraries, Ministry of Culture.
This year, there were 440 exhibitors from 21 countries with around 28,000 titles in Arabic and other languages.
"Our sales in this year's book fair are quite good. A lot of people turned up, especially on the last day," said Yousri Kamal of the Dar-al-Thakfa stall, which sold books ranging from fiction to non-fiction, and technology to translated educational books from English to Arabic.
According to Kamal, the Dar-al-Thakfa bookstore, which has branches in Souq Al-Dira and Souq Al-Jaber, always participate in the book fair held in the city.
"We had been coming here for the past couple of days and looked at, mostly, cooking books and some children's books," said Huda Gehani, who was at the last day of the fair with her daughter Sumayah. Desmond Vaz of Pioneer House said their bookstore always looks forward to installing a stall in book fairs in Doha.
Muhammed Khays of Crescent Bookshop said his company is happy with the many English and Arabic books for children they've sold during the duration of the book fair.
Abubackar VPC of the ISAM bookshop, however, said he was disappointed that not many people bought books from his stall, which sells dictionaries and English classics like the House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Little Men and Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, among others.
"I've been to many book fairs, but this is the first time I've seen people not buying mostly English books," said Abubackar. But, he said, it's a good thing the last day drew a big crowd of book lovers.
By Joyce C Abaño
© The Peninsula 2009
