UNESCO Declares Beirut 2009 World Book Capital

Literature Underground: Like the bouquinistes along the Seine in Paris, Beirut's bookstores can be wonderfully fugitive affairs, burrowing out of nowhere in a city long known for being the Middle East's lushest literary oasis. (Photo courtesy of Um Naief via Flickr)

Since 2001, UNESO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) has been naming a city the World Book Capital for that year. Madrid was the first in 2001, followed by Alexandria in 2002 (in recognition for the city's re-opening of its famed library), New Delhi, Antwerp, Montreal, Turin, Bogota and, this year, Amsterdam.

The choice for 2009 was (and was not) a surprise: Beirut. A surprise, maybe, because even as it's clawed its way out of 15 years of war, Lebanon is still not the Mediterranean jewel it was before 1975. It's still more or less riven by factional and sectarian and feudal divisions. It's still susceptible to the occasional assassination, car bomb, or risky showdown that reminds everyone of how close the country teeters to civil war all over again.

Then again, declaring Beirut the World Book Capital for 2009 couldn't be a surprise considering the city's historic role as the anchor of the Middle East's literary and intellectual world.

As the writer Jean Said Makdisi, author of Beirut Fragments: A Memoir, wrote in the New York Review of Books in 1990, Downtown Beirut's Hamra street had exemplified "an almost boundless tolerance and freedom of thought."

It was this that had made Hamra a center for the entire region. Its cafés had been meeting places for dissidents, intellectuals, and refugees. It was here that they could speak and listen, read and discuss each other's books, often published in Beirut even if banned in their own countries. Journalists from everywhere filed their reports about large parts of Asia and Africa, as well as the Arab world, from their listening post here. Students and their teachers from the many Beirut universities sat for hours in animated and passionate discussion of national and regional issues. Beirut had been a window open to the world and everything in it, from the latest hemlines and colors, to the latest ideas. Now the window is in danger of closing, though it is not quite closed yet, not yet.

Eighteen years later, the window may be open wider. It can slam shut at any moment, though never so hermetically as to cut off a certain cultural vitality that endures--and that endured even during Lebanon's worst days of war, as most Lebanese would tell you. UNESCO pointed out just that vitality when it chose the city as its World Book Capital “in the light of its focus on cultural diversity, dialogue and tolerance, and of its diverse and stimulating programme.” UNESCO's declaration went on: "Beirut, which is facing great challenges in terms of peace and peaceful coexistence, is recognized for its commitment to dialogue, which is necessary more then ever in the region, and that the book is able to contribute actively towards this goal."

The nomination does not imply any financial prize, UNESCO notes, or even the obligation to put on festivals and events. It's "an exclusively symbolic acknowledgment of the best programme dedicated to books and reading." For Beirut, the prize is in the acknowledgment.

See Also:

• UrShalim's Moussa Bashir on Beirut's Designation
• Beirut World Book Capital 2009 - Official Site