Launching the Big Read Project at the BA
Posted on
Alexandria—
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina will launch the “Big Read: Egypt/US” Project on Saturday, 7 February 2009 at the BA Plaza. The project will take place during the period from January to August 2009 and will feature lectures, sessions, film screening, play readings, literary and artistic competitions as well as Internet activities.
Dr. Sohair Wastawy, Head of BA Library Sector, stated that the launching ceremony will begin with a PowerPoint presentation about the project and the idea behind it; and a reading of Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird , that was translated within the project, will initiate its activities. There will also be a march on the Corniche road as part of the launching ceremony.
To Kill a Mockingbird, first published in 1960, is still a bestseller. It was translated into forty different languages and is considered an American classic. Set in the America of the 1930s, the novel narrates the story of an African-American who was discriminatorily accused of raping a white woman.
The project is a collaborative Global Cultural Initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts, in partnership with Arts Midwest and the Institute of Museums and Library Services. It was a result of the National Endowment for the Arts Annual Report in 2004 that stated a great decline in the percentage of Americans reading for pleasure. The Initiative aimed at providing local organizations with a collection of books by eminent American writers and supporting them in holding a number of cultural events on a selected book.
Recently, two non-American books were added to the “Big Read” collection, namely The Death of Ivan Ilyich by the Russian Author Leo Tolstoy and Alless wal Kilab (The Thief and the Dogs) by the Egyptian Author Naguib Mahfouz. Hence, they thought of exchanging reading between Americans and other nations as a global cultural initiative, and the project “The Big Read: Egypt/US” emerged. It aims at introducing Egyptian readers with American literature and introducing American readers with Egyptian literature. The Project is implemented by, in addition to the above mentioned American organizations, the US Department of State. The Egyptian partners are the American University in Cairo (AUC), the Egyptian Association for Educational Resources (E-ERA), and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA).