Shoppers at Book festival
Photo: Shai Rosenzweig
Hebrew Book Week to open June 7
Annual festival to focus on developing Galilee, Negev; Vice premier Peres to hold public reading in Beer Sheva
8,405 new titles – books, journals, cassettes and CDs – were released in Israel in 2005, according to a new report released in advance of Hebrew Book Week.
The annual festival will open June 7 and, despite the name, will last 10 days. This year's theme is Developing the Galilee and the Negev, and the fair's main event will be held in Beer Sheva, in the presence of Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who is scheduled to hold a public reading.
The National Library at Hebrew Universtiy in Jerusalem reports that 6,840 books were released last year, as compared to 6,436 in 2004. In addition, there were 915 journal titles and new newspapers, and 650 non-book titles, including cassettes and CDs, appeared last year.
Other figures: 5,788 new titles were published in Israel last year in Hebrew, 567 in English, and 183 in Russian. There were 92 new titles in Arabic, as opposed to just 62 in 2004.
Individual books were also released here in other languages, such as Georgian, Polish and Chinese. Some 88 percent of the Hebrew titles were originally written in Hebrew, and the rest were translated.
Tzvi Aloush contributed to the report
