After the anti-pandemic measures that shrunk the International Book Fair numbers prosper again. This year it had 230,000 visitors, half book industry professionals and the other half weekend visitors. In the end, there were 3,300 events for the book inside and outside the exhibition and 4,300 exhibitors from 153 countries. But the real Babel will come next year. This year’s honored country, Italy, has already handed over the baton to the Philippines who will exhibit their book production in 2025. The Philippines has 7,641 islands and 183 spoken languages!

In the middle of this year’s pandemonium and the Hellenic Pavilion, organized with generous sponsorship of the NSRF by the Department of Letters of the Ministry of Culture. Rather larger than usual, more elongated, without aesthetic elevations. Here Greece presents urbi et orbi its book production with the participation of many publishers and every year some writers from Athens. Of course, the purpose of the book’s appearance on this catwalk is not only to show off the country without faltering and breaking its heel. The purpose is to introduce authors to foreign publishers and agents, to stimulate interest in the purchase of copyrights and then the translation of Greek titles into foreign languages. In other words, we are talking about the most extroverted happening in the book.

Screenshots and impressions

But in the very first intervention of the Greek Pavilion, the presentation of the Thessaloniki International Book Fair in 2025 with Italy also being honored, things negate any extroversion. No one has provided for a microphone, everything is covered by the stentorian display of the booth opposite, the officials chatter around a bank some incomprehensibly, the responsible deputy minister does not get up even for a moment to honor the foreign guests. Bad tongues even claim that he prefers to stay within arm’s reach of the delicious peanuts. We curious few stand guard with our bodies over the silent dinner.

But also the next day in the morning similar things happen. The presentation of Ioanna Bourazopoulou stumbles and is constantly interrupted, because yes, the importance of the microphone has been discovered in the meantime, but this particular trinket keeps interrupting. The one and only interested foreigner watching leaves halfway through. The cute interpreter faces huge problems because she is asked to linguistically manage a cognitive material, the existence of which she had never imagined. Fortunately someone in charge whispers to her that she can be put out of her torment, the seven remaining present understand Greek perfectly.

In the vise of the Greek pavilion

The cancellation of the promotion of Greek writers abroad is of course not simply due to the absence of a microphone. This absence, however, symbolizes the suffocating introversion that usually characterizes, with qualitative parentheses on the era of the crippled EKEBI, our presence in Frankfurt, since Hellas ekousa akoussa was present for the first time in 1966 until today. The contemporaneity of the authors with a dozen people passing by at the Greek stand is compatible, but it does not constitute the promotion and recommendation of literature.

Normally Ioanna Bourazopoulou’s place would be on a panel with foreign writers on the literature of the fantastic today. Dionysis Kapsalis’ place would be in a forum with foreign poets on the idiosyncrasy of today’s art. (Colleague Iosifina Tsagalidou documents our two authors’ views on literature in the age of artificial intelligence and social media in the videos accompanying this article.)

Over 3,000 events in total were organized this year inside and outside the fair for books and authors, with books and authors. But participating in them and even more so their timely co-organization requires planning and preparation of a year. Greek participation in Frankfurt is primarily limited to the presence within the walls of the Greek pavilion. The various factors then return to the national center and quickly forget that there will be a next year. The funds are disbursed anyway shortly before the exhibition, the program is announced with the soul in the mouth, the selection of authors and their inclusion in the program of the exhibition, the search for presenters, interpreters and … microphones is left to its fate.

From the result we conclude that the events of the Greek pavilion traditionally serve more the needs of the organizers than the protagonists of the book. We have met in the last forty or so years at Frankfurt a variety of ministerial emissaries, ignorant and preconceived, indolent and active, indifferent and amiable. But all without exception were ambitious. Why did they fail to harmonize their ambitions with those of their object, the Greek book?