The Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature has announced a new round of literary all-stars who have committed to spending up to four days in a luxury hotel in Dubai to talk about their books. Frank McCourt, Margaret Atwood, Louis de Bernieres, Karin Slaughter, Kate Mosse, Penny Vincenzi, and Kate Adie will be joining authors like Paolo Coelho and Lynne Truss who were on the roster when EAIFL organizers announced themselves to the international publishing community at the London Book Fair last month.
“I cannot imagine a more vibrant and alive city to host a festival of literature,” says festival director Isobel Abulhoul, who is also the co-owner of Magrudy’s, an independent bookstore in Dubai. In addition to bringing in a bumper crop of international writers, the festival appears to be explicitly designed to call attention to the literary culture of the United Arab Emirates—both to spotlight significant Arab authors and to emphasize the status of Dubai as a place where people love to read (setting aside the censorship issues that prevent Magrudy’s from stocking, say, “anti-religious” books like The God Delusion).