Even in Peace, Lebanon's Literary World Remains at War
By Yasmina Jraissati - Publishing Perpectives

This year, with Beirut serving as the World Book Capital for 2009, the city's literary world remains linguistically and cultural divided: the city will be hosting two distinct book fairs, the Lebanese Francophone Book Fair (Salon francophone du livre de Beyrouth) which took place in October and November, and the International Beirut Book Fair (Maarad al kitab al duwali), more commonly called the "Arab" book fair, which will be held in December. Each caters to a different audience of readers and book lovers and they remain, for the most part, segregated from one another, with those exhibiting at one fair tending not to visit the other, and vice versa.
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