The headline says "Iraq, once a country of fervent readers, now starves for books." And to meet that need,
... the government has begun sponsoring book fairs. So far
there have been two, one at Baghdad University that ended last week and
another in northern Iraq. [Alaa Makki, a Sunni Muslim lawmaker who heads the Iraqi parliament's education committee,] hopes for more.
So many people turned out for the Baghdad fair that its organizers extended the event from nine days to 15.
With
60,000 titles spread across dozens of folding tables in the
university's gymnasium, the fair's selection included books in Arabic
and English, on subjects ranging from medicine and engineering to
acting and safe driving.
About 40 publishers participated, almost all of them foreign.