Egypt’s Minister of Culture Inas Abdel Dayem, reported back on the first four days of the 14-day Cairo International Book Fair, widely recognized as the largest book event on the planet.

With four days down it was announced that already 600,000 visitors had crammed into the venue, which this year has as its slogan “Egypt-Africa: A Culture Of Diversity”.

Volume of sales of Ministry of Culture’s publications were up three times on last year for the same period.

Haitham al-Hag, Head of the General Egyptian Book Organisation, said that GEBO sales had exceeded 60,000 in the first four days of the fair.

While the Head of the General Authority for Cultural Palaces, Ahmed Awad, said that the authority has sold more than 8,000 books in the same first four days.

Via Egypt Today.

Too soon to say if the 51st Cairo International Book Fair will break any records, but on current form it is likely to comfortably exceed two million visitors by the end of the event.

So much for the nonsense that Arabs don’t read.