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Water, water everywhere ... Despite their rich literary culture few Arabs are able or willing to make reading a part of their everyday lives, regional publishers complain. (Mosaic).

Article Excerpt
Arabic may be the one of the worlds oldest and richest extant languages, but few Arabs are reading its modern literature, writers and publishers say.

With literacy rates varying between 40% for Mauritania and a high of 85% in Lebanon, roughly 40% of the Arab region of 280m people don't have the ability to read in the first place. And this in a literary culture, which has at its centre a religious text whose first word is an order to "read!" out loud.

But the publishing industry says most Arab countries do little to encourage their people to make reading, especially novels, a part of their lives. Egypt has the largest population of 68m but produced no more than 12,000 books in 2001, according to Ibrahim Al Moallem, head of the Arab Publishers Federation and owner of leading Egyptian publisher Dar Al Shurouq. Less than 50% of those titles were new publications, and religious and school textbook material took up the lion's share, Al Moallem says, with a smattering of big-selling political tracts and even fewer...

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