THE 2022 MALTA BOOK FESTIVAL

Your free ticket to the planet of books

The 2022 Malta Book Festival will take place Wednesday 23 to Sunday 27 November at the Malta Fairs & Conventions Centre (MFCC), Ta’ Qali.

The Malta Book Festival is the most important book event in the Maltese calendar. With an estimated attendance of 80,000 people over five days and the participation of more than 50 exhibitors, it celebrates the book culture and seeks to represent the book in its entirety – not just as any object of consumption, but as something that involves the reader beyond the confines of the book. Year after year, the Festival expanded in scope both in terms of participation and as a cultural event. It is free of change and open to the public in the mornings and evenings.

The Malta Book Festival will be held for the second time (and the first time without Covid-19 mitigation measures in place) at the Malta Fairs & Conventions Centre, Malta’s largest international conference and exhibition venue. This year’s Malta

Book Festival will be boasting over

8,000 square metres of stand space being dedicated to exhibition areas for publishers, booksellers and NGOs, and activity areas for the numerous book presentations and discussions, while providing visitors with full accessibility and hassle-free parking.

The cultural programme of the Festival features a wealth of activities, including dramatisations of literary texts, discussions and conferences on literary themes, book launches, book presentations, poetry readings, meetings with authors, and seminars. Weekday mornings are reserved for school children and students, and a special programme of events is prepared for them, including shows based on the winners of the 2022 Terramaxka Book Prize and created in collaboration with Ziguzajg. In addition to these, this year’s edition will feature an exhibition space for book publishingrelated art, organised in partnership with Arts Council Malta.

This year the Festival will feature two special guests: John Boyne, the bestselling author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (David Fickling Books), whose presence at the Malta Book Festival will be part of the international book tour for the forthcoming publication of his critically acclaimed latest novel, All the Broken Places (Doubleday). And Maltese-American comic book artist and journalist Joe Sacco, one of the world’s

greatest cartoonists widely hailed as the creator of a new form of journalism in the shape of war reportage comics.

The 2022 Malta Book Festival poster is an ode to the pictures and illustrations that enrich books throughout our reading lives, from alluring images on front covers persuading us to lose ourselves in the stories within to the genres that have made visual storytelling a literary art. illustrated and designed by children’s author and illustrator Gattaldo around a theme that dates back to the cave dweller - visual storytelling, the Festival poster tells a story through images arranged sequentially, like in a silent comic.

The National Book Council remains committed to ensuring the safest possible experience for visitors. In the coming weeks and months the National Book Council will be announcing the Festival’s local and international guest authors, and the Festival’s events programme catering for audiences of all ages.

Illustrations and branding copyright with: Gattaldo.

Follow our our website ktieb.org.mt and also on facebook.com/NationalBookCouncil for further updates about the 2022 Malta Book Festival.

Credit: Gattaldo