“Let’s talk about literature”

 

The International Jerusalem Book Fair and Leipzig Book Fair: Two important venues for German-Israeli encounters.

 

This year the Leipzig Book Fair has chosen literature from Israel as its focal theme. The occasion: Germany and Israel celebrate 50 years of diplomatic relations. The programme is entitled “1965 to 2015. Germany – Israel” and from 12 to 15 March 40 authors will voice their opinions in 74 events. The idea: German and Israeli writers and the audience have the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the respective other country via literature and can talk to one another about their particular perceptions. “After all, literature is often political,” as Oliver Zille, Director of Leipzig Book Fair emphasises.

 

Do Israeli men and women of letters share this opinion? Not all of them – as Oliver Zille and a group of German literature journalists found out during the International Jerusalem Book Fair.

At the invitation of the German and Israeli foreign ministries, from 7 to 11 February the group met a number of Israeli authors and publishers as well as the organizers behind the Jerusalem Book Fair.

At the meeting with authors in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem attended by the likes of Hila Blum, Lizzie Doron, David Grossman, Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, Fania Oz-Salzberger, Ron Segal and Meir Shalev, after only a few minutes the journalists and literary figures found themselves deep in political debate. Often the authors spoke about their personal assessment of domestic and foreign policy developments in Israel and Germany.

In particular, Lizzie Doron, who in her latest work describes the fraught friendship between herself and an Arab-Israeli filmmaker, went into the complex situation in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. ‘Complex’ was also the word participants in the panel discussion on “Israelis in Berlin” used to describe what motivates young Israelis to live for a while in Berlin or other places in Germany. Authors Eldad Beck and Fania Oz-Salzberger as well as the German Ambassador to Israel, Andreas Michaelis, sat on the panel at the event organized by the Goethe-Institut.

That said, there was agreement amongst the authors on one point: They wish primarily to be perceived as writers irrespective of whether their works are political or not. In the discussion Meir Shalev, who for decades has numbered amongst the most successful Israeli authors in Germany, underscored that his books were not political and demanded “Let’s talk about literature”.

 

Israeli book market undergoing radical changes

 

The journalists sought the opinions of Yftach Dekel, Managing Director of Israel’s largest publisher Keter, and Yoel Makov, Director of the Jerusalem Book Fair, on books and the book market in Israel. Here again, politics plays a role – albeit domestic policy. Since summer 2014 a new law has been in force that has introduced book price controls. The latter applies exclusively to new publications in the first 18 months after the first publication.

 

In Israel, two chains hold 90 percent of the book trade. In a market without price controls this fierce competitive situation led to a “discount battle”, as Yftach Dekel explained in conversation with the German journalists in Jerusalem. “The book trade not only determined the price customers paid but also the prices for publishers,” so he suggested. It was a fatal situation for the 164 Israeli publishers. Since the introduction of the price controls for new publications last summer the number of books sold has dropped by 60 percent, claimed the MD of Keter. Yet the publisher and book fair director both agree that in Israel the zest for reading is as alive as ever.

That the same is true for Germany will be proven once again by Leipzig Book Fair from 12 to 15 March. “We are expecting to see similar numbers to last year, in other words more than 230,000 visitors to the 3,200 events at Leipzig Book Fair and Europe’s largest reading festival ‘Leipzig reads′”, explains Book Fair Director Oliver Zille.