A year without the Casablanca International Book Fair is like “a week without a Friday.” February passed without the city celebrating books and book lovers. The pandemic has disrupted the cultural calendar, creating a gap in it whose depth can only be felt by those accustomed to attending this cultural celebration.
Every year since the fair became a regular annual event, the city has been accustomed to witnessing, over the course of two weeks, an unusual bustle and activity that encompasses all its cultural, hotel, and commercial spaces; indeed, it is a dynamic that involves an entire ecosystem of services, designed to welcome significant numbers of Moroccan and foreign visitors and exhibitors, as well as its residents, who flock to this event from all walks of life and age groups.
Everyone missed this year’s festival, which was canceled due to the pandemic—though it was officially termed a postponement—along with other cultural and artistic events, turning the city’s year into a bleak one devoid of the joy of creativity; yet the impact of the exhibition’s cancellation was felt most keenly.
The event is exceptional by any measure and has attracted extraordinary attention from citizens, performers, publishers, intellectuals, and students—even young schoolchildren, who have been eagerly awaiting it, seeing it as their chance to shake hands with the heroes of their favorite stories in a venue that has always welcomed them with great enthusiasm.
“It is difficult for a country like Morocco, where the publishing and book industry is fragile and weak, to do without the Casablanca International Book Fair, simply because this fair plays a pivotal role in revitalizing the Moroccan book industry,” said writer and author Yassin Adnan, commenting on the cancellation of this year’s edition of the fair.
Adnan, whom visitors to the fair have come to recognize as a familiar face who consistently makes a strong presence at the event through his active participation and engagement, added, “Let’s start with the cultural and literary opening, which we used to postpone until February because we’ve become fully convinced in recent years that the fair has become the actual kickoff for the Moroccan cultural scene. It is an official and genuine cultural event. It is also a vibrant cultural pilgrimage attended by book lovers from various Moroccan cities.”
According to the owner of Hot Maroc, “Given the weakness of our book distribution mechanisms and the decline of most Moroccan bookstores—which have failed to keep pace with the literary and intellectual scene—the fair has become a key commercial opportunity for publishers to ensure the direct sale and promotion of their books. Therefore, the financial loss this year is significant.”
As a professional in the field of cultural media and literary journalism, this writer asserts that “The Book Fair has always been an excellent opportunity for fellow journalists, as the fair provides them with rich material through its publications, guests, and seminars; their coverage of the seminars and publications, as well as their interviews with the authors, continues for months after the fair has ended.”
“That is why we feel today as if Morocco’s cultural season has been taken away from us this year, and all the initiatives undertaken by certain parties—publishers and associations—are an attempt to fill this void. Otherwise, no event is capable of revitalizing the national cultural scene and breathing life into it like the Casablanca International Book Fair, which the pandemic has unfortunately forced us to postpone. A postponement that, unfortunately, has now effectively become a cancellation.”
Written by... Nazha Boulanda
