Christian Science Monitor
Thursday October 5, 2017
Faisal Omar/ Reuters
And in Slovakia, one of the world’s more unusual museums opened last month: Štefan Polgári opened the Múzeum Mobilov – or Museum of Vintage Cellphones – in his home.
In Mogadishu, Somalia, book-loving Somalis defied the threats of terrorists and went forward last month with the third annual Mogadishu Book Fair.
The war-scarred African capital seems an unlikely venue for a literary fair. As of last year, the city had no bookstores and no operational public libraries.
But that’s exactly why Mogadishu – and Somalia – need a book festival, Mohamed Diini told Al Jazeera when he first founded the event in 2015. “We are holding this fair to revive the culture of writing and reading in our country. Another aim is to connect local writers with their counterparts from abroad so they can exchange ideas,” he said.
Yet the fair went forward and even achieved another goal, as foreign authors were in attendance for the first time. Thirty-one authors – including expatriates who returned from abroad and also some authors from neighboring African countries – participated in the fair, meeting with a few thousand book-loving Somalis.
“The response is quite huge. The need is there,” Mohamed Dubo told Quartz. Mr. Dubo also said that the fair has inspired him to open a bookstore in the city. “The willingness to read books is there,” he said.