TEHRAN, Iran — Tens of thousands of people attended the 35th Tehran International Book Fair here to browse and buy books from 2,600 local as well as many foreign publishers. Held at the Imam Khomeini Mosalla Mosque May 8-18, the annual cultural event is among the biggest book fairs in the Middle East.
Organizers featured two official programs as part of the fair, one on Gaza and Palestine, and the other on “The Status and Value of Girls and Women” in Iran. Yemen was the 2024 country of honor.
Attendance was lower than in previous years, due in part to conditions in Iran, including inflation exacerbated by imperialist sanctions that fall hardest on working and middle-class people with lower incomes.
One stand in the foreign languages section featured books by Pathfinder Press, which has participated in the book fair for more than 30 years. Its top sellers were Are They Rich Because They’re Smart? Class, Privilege, and Learning under Capitalism by Socialist Workers Party National Secretary Jack Barnes; Labor, Nature, and the Evolution of Humanity by Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, George Novack, and Mary-Alice Waters; and The Communist Manifesto. V. I. Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism was another top seller.
One visitor to the booth said he stopped when he saw the cover of Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power by Barnes. He bought it along with The Low Point of Labor Resistance Is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward, which discusses the big shifts in world politics today, including the end of a decadeslong retreat by the working class and unions in the U.S. It presents a political course for working people to break with the bosses’ Democratic and Republican parties and forge their own party, a labor party, to contend for political power.
Some students from Burkina Faso were surprised to see Pathfinder’s French-language titles. They bought a book by Thomas Sankara, the leader of the 1983-87 Bukinabe Revolution, as well as a French translation of Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power.
Books by Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and other leaders of the Cuban Revolution also sold well. In the main hall, publisher Talaye Porsoo displayed books in Farsi, Iran’s official language. One university student bought every book about the Cuban Revolution at the booth. He told another visitor that these books were the ones to get “if you really want to learn about the problems of the society.” Talaye Porsoo also featured its newest Farsi translation, The Turn to Industry: Forging a Proletarian Party by Jack Barnes.
Titles on women’s emancipation were popular. Iranian publisher Golazin Publications offered Cosmetics, Fashions and the Exploitation of Women by Joseph Hansen, Evelyn Reed and Mary-Alice Waters, as well as Woman’s Evolution by Reed. Talaye Porsoo was selling a Farsi translation of Women in Cuba: The Making of a Revolution Within the Revolution by Vilma Espín and other Cuban leaders. Many of these books were also on sale in English, Spanish and French at the Pathfinder stand.
A visitor to the Talaye Porsoo stand familiar with some of the publisher’s books said he had read Opening Guns of World War III: Washington’s Assault on Iraq by Barnes, noting that the author had “correctly pointed to the impending third world war” in the 1990s.
Many books by participating publishers were displayed on the book fair’s website and could be purchased online from anywhere in the country. Talaye Porsoo, for example, sold 94 books to people in Khuzestan, Hormozgan, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province, the Central provinces, and elsewhere.