Algerian Culture Minister to Echourok: The Algerian people is keen on reading

The Algerian culture minister Kalida Toumi has blamed the Algerian literary class for the citizens’ disengagement to acquire books declaring in an interview to Echourouk that “This category has to find appropriate means to attract readers”.

•  She also expressed her satisfaction over the attraction registered in the 15^th edition of Algiers International Book Fair, although she found the controversy over the price of the book somewhat exaggerating.
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• Echourok: How do you evaluate the success of the 15^th edition of Algiers book fair?
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• Toumi: The flocking of the population to this fair is self explanatory and serve both the book and the Algerian people alike because I do believe that a nation whose population cues up to  acquire a book is great one and I’m still optimistic about its future; as concerns those who think differently, I think that they want a convey a gloomy picture of this society and consider the population as a “ backward” one.
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• Echourok This is for the attendance, what about those who consider that high prices curb readership in Algeria?
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• Toumi: We don’t have to raise this question, because a book sold at 500 Algerian Dinars is affordable for everyone and if we cannot pay this sum to acquire a book it means that the problem lies on us unless they want it for free. But there is another category that doesn’t bother, one has to bear in mind that culture has a price and one has to pay the same way you pay your ticket to get to the stadium or a theatre.
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• Echourok: Still the book is not affordable for university students?
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• Toumi: If the complaint came from a farmer I would have been comprehensive but coming from a student who knows the value of the book, it saddens me. The 2008 Nobel prize Laureate Jose Saramago was asked how did he learn to write? And replied that his school was the book itself… Our ancestors didn’t have the opportunity to educate themselves consequently we don’t have to blame them for neglecting reading, but we have to for ourselves as a post independence generation.