United Arab Emirates: Leaves in the desert

It’s not so much the volume of deals done in the agents’ enclosure, the number of exhibitors or the size of the conference hall it takes place in. It’s not even — though this can be a key indicator — that the local sex workers take the week off. Nope: you know your book fair is the real thing once the Scientologists come.

At the Frankfurt Book Fair their stand is enormous. So wandering round the cavernous halls of the Sharjah International Book Fair, to come upon a display devoted to the works of L. Ron Hubbard was like greeting an old friend. There was no Dianetics, more’s the pity (local religious sensitivities), but here were lurid ziggurats of L. Ron’s pulp stuff — all ghouls and bosoms and titles like The Carnival of Death and Dead Men Kill.

Two lanes across from L. Ron’s prentice-work is a stand selling exquisitely bound Arabic copies of the Koran.