IF SOMEONE TELLS YOU THAT BELGRADERS LOVE BOOKS, don’t take their word for it. Plan to meet in the Serbian cap- ital at the end of October and vis- it the kingdom of literature that is circled in our calendars each year as one of those events that you simply cannot wait for. Even if you aren’t a literary fanatic, there’s something irresistible in the millions of colour- ful covers, the smell of newly print- ed pages, people walking among the stands with lists of desired editions in their hands, captivated while leaf- ing through newly released books. e Belgrade Book Fair is a spe-
cial place for all of us who love to read, but also for writers who can watch the process of people falling in love with their works on the spot. “Look for a book here that you will be able to love. You might thereby be helping this planet to survive,” said Milorad Pavić speaking at the Book Fair 20 years ago, while the wonderful De- sanka Maksimović stated that she is often sad here… “Look at the huge amount of secrets around you! I al- ways feel more sad than happy at the Book Fair: if we lived for hun- dreds of years, we wouldn’t be able to open all these shells of the pearls of human thought, full of fires of the heart and storms of imagination”! And it all started at the Zagreb Fair, under the patronage of Josip Broz Tito, way back in 1956. at in- augural fair was attended by many Yugoslav greats, including Ivo Andrić and Miroslav Krleža, to name just a couple. e very next year, 1957, the Book Fair was held in Belgrade – immediately after the construction of the modern halls was completed, and very quickly earned the epithet of a cult event. It is today considered the largest gathering place for repre- sentatives of the publishing business from all over the world, right after the fairs of Frankfurt and Warsaw. e Belgrade Book Fair is an op- portunity to present foreign authors and publishers in Belgrade, alongside numerous domestic writers, so over the previous 60-plus years we’ve had the opportunity to see and hear the greatest names of world literature. is aspect of the Fair was best ex- plained by Ivo Andrić in 1970, when he said: “Already at the first superfi- cial glance one can see the desire for the Fair to be an open window with a double view, with a view for our per- son into the foreign book world and a view for a foreigner into the route and development of the book in the literature of our peoples”. And a man who came to every Fair for half a century, the good spirit of Belgrade, the chronicler of its peo- ple and time, Momo Kapor, began his relationship with the Book Fair as a student of the Academy of Fine Arts in love with Salinger…
Još nije sasvim sigurno da li će Sajma ove godine biti, ali čak i ako ga ne bude – stay tuned. Dok bude Beograda, biće i njegovih knjiga It is not yet entirely certain whether the Book Fair will be held this year, but even if it doesn’t take place - stay tuned! As long as Belgrade exists, so will its books
“For me the fair is a great lesson about time. Specifically, it was fifty years ago that I came to the fair for the first time, as a young student of the Academy of Fine Arts, and I had a dustman’s coat with a hood and I stole a book, Freni and Zui. I put it in the hood. As soon as they noticed that there was no book, they started searching us all, but they didn’t find the book because it didn’t cross their minds to look for it in the hood. Al- most half a century has passed since then, and I’ve been to almost every fair. Also, for me the fair is a les- son in modesty, because when a per- son sees a billion books in one place, including capital editions, collected works, encyclopedias, he is absurd- ly prompted to sit down and write a new book. Madness, however, is stronger than reason, and I return home to write a new book.”
Rhythm of the city » Ritam grada | 59
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