Frankfurt days again, book days at the 76th International Book Fair which officially opened last night and continues until Sunday, the weekend also open to the public. Because unlike the usual book fairs we know, which are primarily aimed at the public, the one in Frankfurt is primarily professional. In other words, publishers, translators, agents present in a huge stock exchange for buying and selling copyrights with approximately 4,000 publishers from 95 countries, 1,000 authors from all over the world and 650 events at the exhibition itself and many parts of the city. At the Weltenleser bookstore, for example, Yiannis Palavos presents on Saturday the collection of short stories by “Asteio”, which has just been translated into German by Romiosyni University Publications.

Friendship hand on social media

New media are becoming more established in Frankfurt every year. For example, the video platform TikTok was also present this year, as its community BookTok has evolved into a book distribution tool with simple means. A nice face shows the cover of a book, says a few words and creates a trend among users. And a whole new class of readers is created, there between 18 and 20 years old, new adults are called in the terminology of the industry, they are ardent fans and line up for hours to get an autograph. For autographs and things related to the authors, their exhibition has this year 8,000 sq.m. Netflix is ​​also present this year since many books are the inspiration for TV series. Publishers can meet video game developers in the Games Business Center, while a room is dedicated to audio books and podcasts. On the outside it says Silent disco!

Italian girijangules

Every year the exhibition has an honored country and its literature, in 2001 it was Greece, this year it is Italy. Dozens of authors may have arrived in Frankfurt from Italy, around 60 Italian book titles were translated into German this year, but the whole event went a bit wrong. The issue is not only who is present but also who is absent. So the Italian organizers didn’t invite who, the most famous author at the moment, Roberto Saviano, who since 2006, when he published the international bestseller “Gomorrah” about the action of the Camorra in Naples, has been living under police protection because they are looking for him to settle accounts the Mafia. Saviano is also an annoying opponent of the right-wing Meloni government, he was recently sentenced to a fine of one thousand euros, because he called the prime minister a “bastard” on a TV show. So we know why he wasn’t invited. 41 writers then protested with an open letter, so they called him. Saviano refused the invitation and came to Frankfurt as a guest of the publishing house.

And a Greek success

If one looks in the exhibition for a solid literary presence from Greece, one falls again on Petros Markaris. Critics as well as his large audience are currently welcoming his 15th policeman in a row, which has just been published by the Zurich house Diogenes in a translation by the indefatigable and award-winning Michaela Prinzinger. The reason for the book “The Revolt of the Caryatids”. And what this cop doesn’t have: omnivorous foreign investors, bursts of political activism, murders of women. The German review points out, however, that all these terrible and terrible things are resolved by the likable policeman Costas Haritos in an atmosphere of almost family comfort without blatant extremes. Mediterranean cop at his best. We don’t know what position Markaris will occupy in grammar, but in the German market at least he succeeded. Because of course the book is an intellectual product in its genesis, but also a commercial one in its path.

Let us also mention that in the Greek Pavilion of the exhibition, organized by the Directorate of Letters of the Ministry of Culture under the rector Sissy Papathanasiou, this year Ioanna Bourazopoulou is presented with her trans-Balkan trilogy “The Dragon of Prespa”, which has not yet been translated into German, as well as Dionysis Kapsalis with the anthology of his poems published last year again by Romiosyni university publications. If we go out into the wilder air of the free market, we will find the book by Kallias Papadakis “Dendrites” published in German by the newly established Berlin house Parrhesia. In the German edition at the end of the Lettre International magazine, we find the chapter on Postcolonization from Antonis Liakou’s book “The Greek 20th Century” translated by the veteran Ulf-Dieter Klemm.