Coming Next Month: The 2025 Palestinian Liberatory Book Fair
The second Palestinian Liberatory Book Fair (@palestinelibrary_ffm) is set to take place October 17-19, as counter-programming to the Frankfurt Book Fair, which refuses to sever ties with the Israeli state. The PLBF promises three days of interviews, talks, panels, workshops and readings centering the Palestinian struggle. Organizers answered a few questions about this year’s fair.
Can you tell us a little about the first Palestinian Liberatory Book Fair last year—how it went, who attended, what narratives it challenged and created? Set the scene for us a little.
PLBF: It had already begun to freeze at night, when for two days in late October, we occupied the park across from the Festhalle, the main hall of the Frankfurt book fair. Tents, benches, books and flags quickly turned this in-between place into a space for communal learning, listening and—thanks to our support network—sharing warm meals over conversations. In a packed program, speakers from all over the world, such as the poet Asmaa Azaizeh, historian Rashid Khalidi, filmmaker and journalist Hebh Jamal and poet Mohammad Al-Zaqzouq, shared their work with listeners.
Besides the many attendees from the local Frankfurt solidarity movement who used the liberatory book fair to inform themselves on e.g. the history of settler colonialism in a talk by Anna Younes or the use of writing as a form of resistance, the event also attracted many attendees from the fair across the street, many of whom were for the first time confronted with the issue of the Frankfurt book fair’s complicity. Mixing academic discussions with poetry and song, we feel that something truly liberatory became alive in this cold October park: here, we read, listened, spoke and wrote with purpose, in community, openly and without shame or restraint. Such a way of engaging with art, literature and research subverts the silencing the German state demands from us—and we can’t wait to do it again this year.
What are you hoping to see at the PLBF this year?
PLBF: We are grateful to our group of volunteers and for the trust of our international community to be able to assemble an even bigger program this year than at last year’s liberatory book fair! Starting on Friday, the 17th of October, and running until Sunday evening, we will once more welcome artists, writers, musicians, poets, researchers and activists from around the world to share their work with us. Just as the group of contributors is an international one, so too is the range of issues we hope to center: From Palestine to Kashmir and the Philippines, and from contexts such as environmental justice to anticolonial psychotherapy, participants are sure to find workshops, panels and inputs of immediate relevance to current struggles for liberation. With this program, we hope to not only inspire resistant spirits, but to lend space for practical learning and community building. And so we invite participants to do just that: participate. We hope for you all to engage with us, to locate yourselves in the stories we will encounter here, and carry them back to your own local struggles.
Why should publishers boycott the Frankfurt Book Fair?
PLBF: By taking a stance against the Frankfurt Book Fair, we heed the call to boycott put out by Publishers for Palestine, a network of nearly 600 publishers from 50 countries. The Frankfurt Book Fair has repeatedly shown itself to disregard the humanity of Palestinians while elevating and normalizing the Israeli occupation’s narrative of itself, with director Jürgen Boos avowing the fair’s “complete solidarity on the side of Israel.” In recent years and since the start of this latest phase of Zionist violence, the fair has chosen to cancel Adania Shibli’s award ceremony for her pathbreaking novel Minor Details, while platforming Anne Applebaum—a racist propagandist who has repeatedly justified Zionist murders of Palestinian journalists. Furthermore, the fair holds deep financial ties with Zionist companies and institutions. For these and other reasons detailed in the boycott call, we urge publishers to distance themselves from the Frankfurt book fair.
Can you tell us a bit about the political atmosphere in Germany right now? Do you have additional concerns about this year’s fair?
PLBF: Despite the changing tides as to global and local opinions on the Israeli occupation of and genocide in Palestine, the German state is continuing its support of the Israeli occupation. Though chancellor Merz claimed to have halted new weapons shipments, tons of already approved deals continue to be flown out. The state’s repression of the Palestine solidarity movement grows more intense, with constant police violence at protests, thousands of criminal charges still pending judgement in the courts, as well as a continuous attempt to disrupt venues and structures providing shelter for solidarious events and persons. Equally, however, the movement is becoming braver and more willing to face down criminalization, as recent direct actions in Ulm and other places have shown. So too are more and more people disregarding the unashamed defamation campaigns those who speak out for Palestinians face. The annihilation of Gaza weighs heavy on us, as we find ourselves in a society and at the behest of a state unwilling to end their complicity.
We are cognizant of the challenges this situation brings, which is why the liberatory book fair takes place in the form of an assembly in the public space, rather than at a private venue which can be pressured to withdraw its support. We build on the very successful experiences we made last year and are grateful to be embedded in an enthusiastic community that volunteers and attends the fair, but also demands us to be rigorous in making this a space of learning and solidarity.
If a publisher is in town for Frankfurt, can they also come by the Liberatory Book Fair?
PLBF: Most definitely! We invite any and all people who are in Frankfurt for the fair and who stand in solidarity with the struggle for freedom and justice in Palestine and beyond to come and share this space with us. We chose to take up shop right across the main hall of the Frankfurt Book Fair in order to show publishers and attendees that a different kind of fair is possible—one which is not complicit in genocide and normalizes colonialism, but rather actively resists both.
What sort of events, books, and gatherings will there be at this year’s Palestinian Liberatory Book Fair?
PLBF: Since the inception of the Palestine Library Frankfurt, we have been able to assemble an ever growing catalogue of hundreds of books not only on the issue of Palestine, but anticolonial and liberatory struggles worldwide. Visitors will be able to browse a selection of these at the event, and, once we start our lending program, take out books, just as in any public library. We also welcome publishers to send in samples of relevant publications to be exhibited at the liberatory book fair.
In addition to this, we have a packed program of workshops, listening sessions, poetry readings, panel discussions and more, on topics such as: international law as neocolonialism (with Lena Salaymeh), the political economy of the Gaza genocide (with Shir Hever), militant forms of publishing, Palestinian song and poetry (with Club Sheikh Imam), and many more.
Of great significance to the inception of this year’s fair is also our internationalist commitment. Though of course limited by both our means and the available time, we are looking forward to the interaction between movements and communities the fair will facilitate through the platforming of multiple localities of liberatory struggle.
You’re currently running a crowdfunding campaign. Can you tell us what that will support?
PLBF: In an environment like Germany, institutional funds are rarely available to political endeavors—at least those which commit themselves to liberation. For this reason, the work of the Palestine Library and the broader solidarity movement is and has been entirely community funded, for which we are eternally grateful. With these contributions, we have been able to buy books, fund the travel of speakers, pay for the labor of external contributors such as translators, and purchase or borrow the much needed equipment to put on an event of this size. We are still in need of further funding to make this project a reality and thus would be grateful for any support, financial or otherwise! You can donate to the Palestinian Liberatory Book Fair at one of our fundraising events or via the Palestine Library’s fundraiser.
Images from the 2024 Liberatory Book Fair: