Our best books forward

Now on its 76th year, the Frankfurter Buchmesse (FBM) – better known outside Germany as the Frankfurt Book Fair, the world’s oldest and largest such event – ended successfully last Oct. 20 with a significant representation from the Philippines, which sent scores of authors, publishers and book industry officials to the fair. All that was in preparation for FBM 2025, when the Philippines will be Guest of Honor (GOH), the country whose literature will be the focus of the fair’s attention.

You can think of the Frankfurt Book Fair as the Olympics of the global book industry, with over 200,000 participants (book industry persons and the public) representing over 100 countries. However, there are no prizes for Best Novel, Best Nonfiction Book, Best Children’s Book and so on. Everyone is effectively in competition with everyone else, but the real rewards are in the professional and personal connections made between and among authors, publishers, agents, editors and translators at the fair, connections that materialize into deals for translation and publication rights. Although exhibited books can be sold at the close of the fair, the FBM isn’t meant to sell books, but rights to books, for which it has become the world’s oldest and largest marketplace. This means that, through the right contacts, Filipino books can be translated into and sold in French, Turkish, Spanish and Urdu editions, etc. and vice versa.

Becoming GOH is a signal distinction – but it doesn’t come free. Nations vie and pay for the honor, which this year went to Italy and in 2026 will go to the Czech Republic. I’m sure that there have been and will be more criticisms of our participation in Frankfurt, chiefly of the costs of our foreign exposure vs. the local promotion of our literature, but it’s not a zero-sum game. We need both kinds of investments. We have impressive literary production from all over the country – much of it unknown even to ourselves – but we also need to share the best of it with the world, to raise their understanding of the Filipino above the stereotypes they know (Imelda’s shoes, Manny Pacquiao, DHs, cruise ship crewmen, etc. – not all of them bad, for sure, especially our OFWs, but in need of context).

If FBM 2024 was any indication, FBM 2025 will be an even more resounding success for the Philippines. All literary genres were represented this year in terms of books and panel discussions, and valuable connections were made with European publishers, translators and agents. Philippine literature will never be the same after this. (This year’s upshot for me is that my novel Soledad’s Sister will be coming out soon in Spanish, after its versions in Italian, French and German.)

Having followed trends in international publishing for some time, I’m particularly impressed by the way the FBM has helped to promote our new writing by young authors in literary categories that have traditionally received less attention compared to what I’ve called “the big white whale” of publishing, the novel. Approach most publishers and agents at the FBM and what they’ll ask you is, “Where’s your novel?” For primarily commercial reasons, the novel remains the most saleable and traded commodity at book fairs. (I know many who will wince at my reference to books as commodities, but let’s be absolutely clear about this: the bottom line of book publishing and book fairs is business, not “Kumbaya”-type international peace and understanding.)

Sadly, however, Filipinos have historically not been a novel-writing, novel-buying and novel-reading people. In this respect, Rizal’s Noli and Fili are aberrations, familiar to us only and thankfully because of the law requiring their study. That said, our writers are masters of the short literary forms – poetry and the short story in particular. I’ve often remarked that we Pinoys are world-class sprinters, not marathoners; our world-view is not Olympian, but pedestrian, formed close-quarters at street level.

This year, I’m told that over 70 deals were made between Filipino authors and foreign agents and publishers for the translation and publication of works that went well beyond the traditional novel, including children’s stories (another of our strongest suits) and genre and graphic fiction. These authors were young, and some had their works translated from languages other than English. If anything, this surge in translations, long overdue, is one strategic benefit that our FBM participation has enabled, and our GOH status next year should boost it even further.

According to FBM director Juergen Boos, “I am very excited about the Philippines’ Guest of Honor presentation in 2025. The motto ‘The imagination peoples the air’ resonates with the universality of storytelling. Even though the Philippines is the world’s 13th largest nation with more than 109 million citizens, I believe for many of us in Europe, Philippine literature is currently still rather unknown territory. As the country steps into its role as Guest of Honor, we will learn a lot about the importance of storytelling and today’s cultural scene for Philippine civil society. With an incredible 183 different languages spoken on its 7,641 islands, the country’s diverse influences are one of the aspects I am looking forward to seeing in Frankfurt in 2025.”

I did say that there are no prizes awarded at the FBM, but I have to correct that to acknowledge the Diagram Group Prize for the Oddest Title at the FBM, given since 1978 and now voted upon by the public, and won by such books as Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice, The Joy of Chickens, How to Shit in the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art and If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start with Your Legs. This is not a prize to which Filipino writers have so far aspired, but who knows? Pinoy wackiness (alongside wisdom) knows no bounds.

Many thanks to the National Book Development Board, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, the German literary organization LitProm, culture champion Sen. Loren Legarda and our other sponsors and supporters for this great opportunity to put our best books forward on the global stage. Mabuhay!

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Email me at [email protected] and visit my blog at www.penmanila.ph.