The 11th Nonfiction Book Fair, which opened Thursday, has a reputation for being the book fair with brains, focusing more on works with an intellectual slant compared with the International Moscow Book Fair.
“There are no horoscopes, cheap detective stories or recipe books in our fair, only high-quality publishing houses are represented there,” the fair’s spokesperson, Yelena Lopatina, said in a telephone interview.
The fair sees four days of book presentations, question-and-answer sessions and much more.
It will see more than 200 publishers from 20 different countries. Contemporary British writer Adam Foulds — whose second novel, “The Quickening Maze,” about the relationship between 19th-century poet John Clare, the head of his mental asylum, and Poet Laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson, was shortlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize for Fiction — is one of the fair’s guests.
The Czech Republic is the chosen honored country this year, and among the books on focus is one of Czech plays that includes a play by former president Vaclav Havel.
The Czech Culture Ministry and the Czech Center in Moscow have created a special program for the fair, which includes a photo exhibition of shots from the 1968 Prague Spring, when the Soviets crushed Czechoslovakia’s attempts to move to a different kind of socialism, as well as visits from some of the country’s most popular writers.
Israeli books will also be well represented at the fair as it coincides with the Israeli cultural days in the capital.
Critics have noted that the fair will be lacking any big names this year.
“Unfortunately, the global financial crisis had its effect on us, and the number of participants is much smaller than last year,” Lopatina said.
One of the more interesting items at the fair is a vending machine that can print out books on request. Books should cost between 200 to 300 rubles (about $7 to $10) and allow the reader to have a hot copy of a rare, out-of-print book within a few minutes.
Alongside the show, the fair has a huge number of cultural events from film shows, including a screening of “Shoah,” by Claude Lanzmann, a harrowing 9 1/2 hour epic about the Holocaust. Club Apshu will host a talk between writer Lev Rubinstein and Czech poet Ivan Martin Jirous on Friday at 9 p.m.
To see a complete list of events, check out the fair’s web site at www.moscowbookfair.ru.
The 11th Nonfiction Book fair runs though Dec. 6, Central House of Artists. 10 Krymsky Val. Metro Park Kultury, Oktyabrskaya. Tel. (495) 657-9922.
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