23.10.2016
61st International Book Fair opens
"In the beginning was the word, logos", recalled Ivan Negrisorac, President of Matica Srpska, who has had the honor this year, tonight, together with the Iranian female writer and an actress Narges Abyar, to open, with his speech of welcome spoken somewhere between the Fair 'streets' of Milutin Milankovic and Archibald Reiss, the 61st International Book Fair in Belgrade, one of the most important cultural events in our country which has gathered for decades all lovers of the book and is a real feast of writers and poets, publishers and book lovers across the region.Pointing to the millennia of development of human knowledge, and thus the man as a conscious being, Negrisorac is sure that today there is an urgent need to preserve that essence, logos, and the vital part of it that builds the world, so that the world itself could survive; because, without knowledge, there is nothing. "Book longs for its reader, just as the reader longs for it", Negrisorac said underlining that everything about the book, and its celebrations such as the Belgrade Fair, is a big invitation to talk. At the same time, the president of Matica Srpska could not withhold the existential meaning of the book as a source of knowledge and the means to satisfy man's spiritual need, which is especially shown in crucial times, such that once brought Filip Visnjic, for example. Paying tribute to our epic poet and creator, comparing him with the great and timeless artists like Rumi, the Iranian scholar and poet who created the word bridges to different times and worlds, Negrisorac made the bridge to the others about which then spoke the guest from Iran, director and writer Narges Abyar, whose country this year is the guest of honor of the Book Fair.
"Forty years ago, the novel ‘The Bridge on the Drina’ by Ivo Andric was translated in Iran. Thus, the unobtrusive power of a book connecting four centuries in four hundred pages, became, at the same time, the bridge to the other peoples and cultures", Narges Abyar. The Iranian writer and director pointed out that the translation of Andric's best work is one of the points in the line of a centuries-long tradition of translating works written in Iran, which dates back to the time of the Achaemenids. Abyar has particularly stressed the role of women in the world of books of Iran – it has been for seventy years that the Iranian women write, and on every five male writers, there are three ladies. And the Serbian writers and authors were invited to be guests of the international book fair in Tehran.This year's fair is held under the slogan "Take Books in Your Hands" with the idea that the irrepressible energy of the book remains, regardless of modern, primarily virtual media, a lure for those who like to read. The opening ceremony was attended by numerous representatives of cultural institutions, ministries of the Government of Serbia, representatives of religious communities, the Serbian Armed Forces.
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