More than 650,000 visitors have attended the first four days of this year’s Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF) – a record in its 35-year history. The collected data indicates that the current edition of the fair, which concludes next Saturday at Expo Centre Sharjah, will break the record for overall number of visitors at a single edition, surpassing even last year’s SIBF which reached one million visitors by its close.

HE Ahmed bin Rakkad Al Ameri, Chairman of the Sharjah Book Authority (SBA), organisers of the annual SIBF, announced that the fair has attracted approximately 655,000 from Wednesday to Friday – a figure that has broken the SIBF 2014 record of 520,000 visitors over the same period.

Al Ameri highlighted the factors he believed have played a key role in attracting a greater number of attendees to the fair this year, pointing to the ‘Year of Reading 2016’ initiative and numerous other literary-themed campaigns and activities organised by government bodies that have encouraged residents and tourists to visit the 1,681 publishing houses and enjoy the 1,417 activities taking place at there.

SIBF 2016 welcomes visitors from 9:00am to 10:00pm Saturday to Wednesday, 9:00am to 11:00pm Thursday and 4:00pm to 11:00pm Friday. Hundreds of cultural personalities, artistic figures, media representatives, acclaimed actors, renowned chefs and social media celebrities are participating at the global event.