Book Review

Emaar Properties is commissioning a book about the Burj Dubai. It will not just be any book. Oh no - this being Dubai, it will be of course the largest book in the world.

Someone ought to tell Emaar that it is usually not the size of the book that matters, but what’s in it. Quantity is very rarely preferable to quality. This holds true for property development even if there is severe shortage of housing, but especially when it comes to literature.
A large cover doesn’t make a book automatically interesting to people over the age of three. But then again, the mindset of many people in Dubai may be about that level. And to advertise this feat of Dubai’s intellectual prowess, the big book will be sent around the world. This gives a new meaning to the term ‘book tour’...

I am looking forward to the day when Dubai can send a national author on a worldwide book tour. Just one author of some standing, please. Just one teeny weeny cultural achievement, please. One little drama about foreign labourers and their shattered dreams perhaps? 'Sonapurdog millionaire'? Just one painting or sculpture of value, or, forcryingoutloud even a conceptual art installation to capture the country and times we are living in. Pickled Camel anyone?

I am not asking for Dubai to instantly produce the equivalent to Khalil Gibran or Naguib Mahfouz or Orhan Pamuk (who, through their writing, are directly responsible for interesting me and many other Westerners in the Oriental world, and indirectly for my ill-guided attempt to find it in Dubai).

Perhaps a society must travel through a thousand years to produce artists of this calibre. But, Dubai, why not make a start today? Why not foster culture and the arts instead of getting the 'largest book in the world' made - in England, by English craftsmen, about a building designed by Americans and built by Belgians and Koreans.

It seems Dubai cannot even physically make a book, let alone create literature...