Kitab fi Jerida UNESCO

The Arabic version of BARZAKH: The Land of In-Between مدينة الرياح was selected by the Arab Writers Union among the list of the 100 best Arabic novels published in the twentieth century and was published as part of "Kitab fi Jerida", the largest joint Arab cultural project launched by UNESCO in 1995. UNESCO at the time took the city of Granada as a place for signing the agreement for that cultural reading project with 14 Arab newspapers from the Emirates, Morocco, Jordan, Bahrain, Mauritania, Lebanon, the Sultanate of Oman, Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Algeria and Tunisia. According to this agreement, those newspapers will give their readers monthly books at one time, over a geographic breadth of 14 Arab countries “as a tool for spreading Arabic literature and promoting the unity of the Arabic language and culture,” as stated in the text of the agreement.

We know that the Europeans invented the “pocketbook” project for many years, at a symbolic price and small size, to make it easy for the reader to buy a book and read it in the cafe, bus, picnic and travel; UNESCO has done well in choosing the tabloid paper size. If we calculate the distribution of these newspapers and their spread in their countries, we will know the great importance of this choice: these newspapers printed more than a million copies of the Arabic version of Barzakh, which was sold at the newspaper price.