By Borislav Petrović
Closing of the 21st Sa(n)jam Book Fair in Istria
Behind us is the 21st Sa(n)jam Book Fair in Istria – the Pula festival of books and authors, which over the 11 days of its duration offered some hundred events: book presentations, round tables, professional gatherings, exhibitions, concerts and film screenings. In the fair’s programmes this year, more than 150 participants from Croatia and abroad took part. Their titles were presented by 250 publishers, among whom were 30 significant ones from Serbia, gathered around the Association of Professional Publishers of Serbia (UPIS), and in the offering one could also find a book in English and Italian. Compared to last year, a greater number of visitors was noted, almost 30%, which is also seen overall in the number of titles sold. The best-selling book this year was “Sarajevo, City Map” by Miljenko Jergović; in second place was the children’s book “The Ski Diary of Paulina P.,” by the well-known Croatian children’s author Sanja Pilić, while in third place was the digital book “Living Postcards of Pula” produced by the Fair.
Current, engaged, urban themes and a rich, varied, exceptionally lively programme concept aimed at a very wide circle of visitors marked this year’s Fair. Among the foreign authors who participated in the programme were: Erri De Luca (Italy), Jón Kalman Stefánsson (Iceland), Yuri Vynnychuk and Oleksandr Irvanets (Ukraine), Joachim Sartorius (Germany), Benjamin Flao and Sylvain Coissard (France), Namik Kabil (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Valeria Brigida (Italy) and Dragan Velikić (Serbia).
Miljenko Jergović, Borivoj Radaković, Ivica Ivanišević, Alem Ćurin, Marina Vujčić, Željko Krušelj, Andrea Matošević, Igor Duda, Jasna Žmak, Milan Rakovac, Borna Vujčić, Zdravko Zima, Jurica Pavičić, Zoran Ferić, Boris Dežulović, Dragan Markovina, Predrag Lucić, Boris Greiner, Zvonko Maković, Tonko Maroević, Nadežda Čačinović… are some of the Croatian authors who participated in this year’s programme.
In the closing part of the Fair, this year’s regional programme “Belgrade Reads” presented itself, which presented to Pula the contemporary cultural scene of the city of Belgrade, and which arose in cooperation with the publishing house Geopoetika. To the Pula audience presented themselves: Slobodan Šijan, Goran Marković, Vladislav Bajac, Slavoljub Stanković, Slavimir Stojanović, Božo Koprivica, Đorđe Miketić, Dana Todorović and Vesna Goldsworthy.
The collaboration with the cult Pula Art&Music festival this year also enabled an evening-long concert at which performed: Art Lili (Belgrade), Damir Avdić (Ljubljana) and Miki Solus (Zagreb), and a five-day comics workshop was also held, led by the Pula comics author Petra Gardijan.
The media proclaimed the 21st Fair, already at the start, the Fair with the most topical theme to date. Island-Ghetto-Asylum is a theme that will certainly be especially remembered in the Archive of the Pula fair, but it is also a theme whose debate has only begun and should by no means cease. For next year the theme has already been announced – Transatlantic, within which Portuguese, Spanish and South American literature will present themselves.