A poster for this year's Shanghai Book Fair Photo: Courtesy of the organizers

The 10th Shanghai Book Fair (SBF) will be held at the Shanghai Exhibition Center from August 14 to 20.

Huang Yuning, a senior book editor from the Shanghai Translation Publishing House, who joined SBF when it was started in 2004, recently published an article sharing her thoughts on SBF on her personal blog. In Huang's opinion, of all the book fairs in China, SBF is the closest to its readers. Huang also remarked that during the festival's development, it is always seeking new changes.

This year, besides the expansion in the number of exhibitors (over 500 publishing companies and 700 industry insiders will participate in SBF 2013), the organizing committee has also adopted a series of new measures to celebrate SBF's 10th birthday.

Starting at 9 am, the festival's opening hours have been extended until 9 pm for the whole week with a 5-yuan ($0.81) admission fee after 6 pm, reduced from 10 yuan in the daytime. The committee stated that this new measure was introduced out of consideration for office workers who have regular 9-to-5 jobs and can't visit the festival during the day.

Embracing the digital age, it is also the first time that the SBF will promote its social networking platforms featuring QR code technology and its free iPhone app so that festivalgoers can keep up-to-date on the latest happenings.

SBF's Shanghai International Literary Week (SILW) is another event that Huang highlighted. Held since 2011, this year's SILW will feature a record number of overseas writers, as well new literary events.

Toby Lichtig

Nearly 40 cultural personalities both from China and abroad will attend over 40 literary events during the week. In addition to the Shanghai Exhibition Center, three other venues are hosting events: the Shanghai Library on Changshu Road, the Shanghai Writers' Association on Julu Road and Sinan Mansions on Sinan Road.

Well-known international writers attending this year include the controversial avant-garde Austrian novelist and playwright Peter Handke, whose 1968 play Kaspar was compared to Beckett's Waiting for Godot. British writer Geoff Dyer (But Beautiful, Out of Sheer Rage), Italian novelist Paolo Giordano (whose award-winning novel, The Solitude Of Prime Numbers, was adapted into a Golden Lion-nominated film at the 67th Venice International Film Festival), and Canadian science fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer (Quintaglio Ascension Trilogy, Hominids) will also make appearances at the festival.

Norman Lebrecht Photos: Courtesy of Sheng Yun

A number of acclaimed Chinese writers will attend, including Jia Pingwa, Su Tong, Han Shaogong, Zhang Yueran and He Jingbin from Taiwan.

According to Sun Ganlu, the main curator of SILW 2013, since the theme this year is "The Age of Book Reviews," a number of well-known literary critics, editors, professors and experts are among the 40 industry insiders who will attend.

"We will have a whole day's forum called 'Reviewing Book Reviews' on August 13, the day before SBF begins," Sun told the Global Times, "and some representatives from among those 40 people will attend and give a speech at the forum."

Speakers include British cultural commentators Norman Lebrecht and Toby Lichtig and Dutch academic and East Asia expert Ian Buruma.

Lebrecht is also a well-known music critic and novelist. He has written 12 books about music, which have been translated into 17 languages. The latest is Why Mahler?, a radical reinterpretation of one of the most influential composers of modern times. Lebrecht's first novel, The Song of Names, won a Whitbread Award and is being made into a major feature film. He currently hosts two radio programs on BBC Radio 3.

Ian Buruma

Regarded as one of Europe's leading public intellectuals, Buruma was named one of the top global thinkers of 2010 by Foreign Policy magazine. In 2008, he was awarded the Shorenstein Journalism Award, an annual award which "honors a journalist not only for a distinguished body of work, but also for the particular way that work has helped American readers to understand the complexities of Asia." His latest book, Year Zero: A History of 1945, will be published by Penguin this fall.

Li Jingze from the China Writers' Association, Chen Sihe from the Shanghai Writers' Association, and Zhang Xudong, professor of East Asian Studies and Comparative Literature at New York University, will also attend the literary week as special honored guests.

Another highlight of the festival will be an international academic seminar on James Joyce and his works. University of Leeds professor Richard Brown, who has published a number of books on the author, and Fudan University professor Dai Congrong, whose Chinese translation of Finnegans Wake became a bestseller this year, will both speak at the seminar.

SILW will also hold its first poetry event this year, "A Night of Poems on the Bund." Russian-American poet Ilya Kaminsky (Dancing in Odessa) and Chinese poet Xiao Kaiyu will attend the August 17 event.

From 9 pm on August 16 until 9 am on August 17, the "Global Literature in 12 Time Zones" event will take place at Sinan Mansions, when SBF writers will connect and converse with writers located around the world via video link.