Lire en Fete 2006
Oct 20th, 2006 by Jinja
Being a geek in a developed country isn’t that hard. But being a book geek in a primarily agricultural country like Cambodia is a hard slog. You have to be determined to seek out that knowledge and then follow through.
The revolution of 1975 left few intellectuals remaining; you’ll find that present-day Khmer publishers, printers, writers, librarians are a determined group. Strategies are wildly divergent. The publishing world is not lucrative. But they’re in the game for the long term.
(above – Book Federation)
These are people who get sentimental that Cambodia’s finally gotten ISBNs -International Serial Book Numbers. (Kind of like ‘Hey, we’re finally on the map.’) I take a lot of inspiration from that simple determination, and am proud to call many of them my friends.
Added to this are a new crop of young publishers and a lot of enthusiastic readers. Stir and you’ve got this year’s Lire en Fete (19, 20, 21 October, French Cultural Centre).
Below: some moments from the trilingual craziness yesterday. (More to follow.) Come by and check it out for yourself!
Tags: Cambodia,literature,books,libraries
Sounds interesting! Really hunger to be there. I love book collection, but not much to read :-p
It’s been lots of fun. There are a lot of commercial and nonprofit projects going on that are great to learn about.
Missing were some smaller bookshops like D’s Books, Fantastic Planet and Bohr’s books. (Article & interview on the latter below.)
http://tinyurl.com/ua2ly