Under the patronage of King Abdullah, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, the 2012 Riyadh International Book Fair will be launched here on Tuesday, March 6, under the slogan “Life: Reading”. The event, sponsored by the Ministry of Culture and Information, will continue for 10 days and Sweden will be the Guest of Honor this year. Minister of Culture and Information Dr. Abdulaziz Bin Mohieddin Khoja expressed his thanks to King Abdullah and welcomed Sweden as the Guest of Honor. The annual book fair is extremely popular among locals and people usually complain of the lack of enough parking spots near the venue. Organized at the sprawling Riyadh International Convention and Exhibition Center (RICEC), the fair features hundreds of national and international publishing houses, distributers and retail booksellers under one roof. The security is also tight. Last year, visitors were required to pass through metal detectors installed at the entrance, and the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (Hai'i) deployed a large contingent of their officials to prevent mischief makers from entering the center. The wide range of titles on topics that include Islam, comparative religion, Arab culture, fiction, law, science and technology among others, makes the fair a unique one-stop shop for those who read books not only as a source of information but to understand different cultures and learn about the way that other people live. The books available in the fair are in Arabic, Persian, English, French, Turkish and Urdu.
