Leafing through

Al Ahram Weekly (Dina Ezzat)

Following Mrs Suzanne Mubarak's inauguration of a new cultural centre in the Delta city of Mansoura recently, Dina Ezzat investigates the impact of attempts to promote reading.

"I like to come here during the afternoons between shifts at the mechanic's workshop where I work. It is nice, peaceful and quiet and there are enough interesting books. The most important thing is that it is free. I don't have the money even for a small subscription," said Amir, a 17-year-old high school graduate, as he momentarily suspended his reading of the biography of prominent Egyptian mathematician Moustafa Musharafah at the "Cultural Tent" that Mrs Suzanne Mubarak inaugurated on the corniche of the Delta city of Mansoura a little over a week ago.

The "Cultural Tent" is actually quite a small tent with bookshelves carrying a few hundred titles -- mostly art, literature, a few biographies and children's books. It is part of a recent fashion that was introduced to the steadily expanding reading promotion campaign launched by Mrs Mubarak over 20 years ago.

Along with other cultural outposts and a variety of public libraries -- including some installed in trucks that rove through poorer villages and cities across Egypt -- and cultural centres, the campaign offers several literary prizes and it attempts to provide low-cost editions of thousands of titles, especially the classics.