This year’s Santo Domingo International Book Fair, now in its 18th year, is dedicated to writer Manuel Rueda. Peru is the guest country, and a range of cultural awareness events marking the 50th anniversary of the 1965 Civil War will be held. President Danilo Medina cut the ribbon to formally open the fair at a ceremony at the National Theater yesterday evening, Thursday 23 April 2015. The full schedule of cultural events at the grounds of the Plaza de la Cultura Juan Pablo Duarte continues until 4 May 2015. This year, nearly 430 international publishing houses, 209 bookstores and book-related companies. 630 Dominican authors will be taking part and 41 new Dominican books will be launched at the fair, whose theme this year is “Reinventing Reading.”
The government announced that RD$4.5 million has been distributed to public school children to purchase books at the book fair.
Peruvian ambassador Enrique Palacios said that his country has sent a large delegation of 15 writers and “a ton of books” from 41 publishing houses The 11-day event also includes theater, music, cinema and gastronomical treats.
However, Peru’s most famous author, Nobel prize for literature laureate Mario Vargas Llosa will not be attending “due to other commitments.” Vargas Llosa’s article, “The Pariah of the Caribbean” criticized the Dominican Constitutional Court for ruling that not everyone born in the Dominican Republic was Dominican. The writer described the ruling as “an aberration” and compared it to the Nuremberg Laws that stripped German Jews of their nationality in 1935.
http://presidencia.gob.do/noticias/danilo-medina-inaugura-xviii-feria-internacional-del-libro-santo-domingo-2015-0
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw-SYaZsBQClWS00LXUya2NzaExEVnN3N1VoNWxVcmxtaHJJ/view