The written word is truly priceless. Though, in another, realer sense, it’s also quite expensive.
Enter this year’s 30th annual Hong Kong Book Fair, a summer staple in the city where bookworms can pick up multilingual titles from 680 exhibitors from 39 countries, often for steep discounts.
Organizers yesterday announced the line-up for this year’s fest, which will be held from the 17th through the 23rd of July at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center in Wan Chai. And keep in mind, this isn’t the lame middle school book fair of your youth: last year a total of 1.04 million visitors attended. For comparison, last year the hipper-than-thou Coachella music festival had an aggregate of just 600,000 attendees over its six days — and it had Beyoncé!
The fair, organized by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, has made an effort to showcase international literary talents. This year’s festivities will feature the Finnishe EU Prize for Literature winner Selja Ahava, the French science fiction author Bernard Werber, the Japan Booksellers’ Award winner Kanae Minato, and Swedish author Carl-Johan Forssén Ehrlin to participate in seminars on foreign literature and creative writing.
Aside from the discounted books, visitors can also find stationary, arts and crafts materials, and multimedia products, as well as an art gallery featuring traditional paintings and calligraphy.
Though the fair will feature books of all kinds, this year’s official theme revolves around sci-fi and mystery, and will feature local genre writers like Eddy Lee Wai-choi, Ni Kuang, and Huang Yi.
Tickets start at HK$25 for adults, and HK$10 for kids.
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