London Book Fair 2018

The National Book Council will be taking part in the London Book Fair 2018, a yearly 3-day event held at Olympia, Kensington, in which some of the world’s largest and most important publishers, book agents and rights negotiators convene in order to broker publication deals. NBC representatives will be exhibiting a selection of Maltese literature at the NBC stand, and they will also be holding meetings with a number of contacts in order to facilitate the selling of translation rights for a number of novels, including What happens in Brussels, stays in Brussels by Ġużè Stagno and The Confectioner’s Daughter by Lou Drofenik.

Accompanying the NBC representatives there will be two local authors and poets – Immanuel Mifsud and Walid Nabhan, who will be participating in two seminars -one on the translation of minority language literature and another one on the topic of inclusion, localisation and censorship. The authors will also be reading their poetry at the poetry pavilion on two days of the Book Fair.

Maltese-Norwegian author and translator Kristina Quintano will also be joining the NBC representatives in order to help in the negotiations with a good number of Scandinavian publishing houses. Quintano is a well-known figure in the Maltese literary scene, chiefly but not solely for having translated Trevor Żahra’s Il-Ħajja Sigrieta tan-Nanna Ġenoveffa into Norwegian.

The NBC representatives will also be meeting publishers from Russia, Ukraine, Great Britian and from various Arab countries, in order to present besides the novels mentioned above, works by other award-winning authors such as Clare Azzopardi, Alex Vella Gera, Immanuel Mifsud and Walid Nabhan.

The stand of the National Book Council is located at a central position in the lower floor, 6G50, which it will be sharing with local printers Gutenberg Press. The fair opens on 10 April. In the evening, the NBC will hold a reception at its stand for a number of foreign publishers and important contacts in the international book industry.