The Paris book fair

The annual Salon du Livre at the Porte de Versailles, this one celebrating the last 30 years (the first salon was held in 1980), opens today and runs through Wednesday at the Porte de Versailles. Among 90-some authors, French and otherwise, due to make appearances are Paul Auster, Umberto Eco, and Salman Rushdie.

The major French dailies have issued their usual supplements on the occasion of the Salon, taking stock of French literature and publishing in a climate of crisis and highlighting the hopeful and distinctive offerings of the day. Le Monde’s is especially serious and comprehensive. A Nous Paris, for its part, explains briefly why the e-book, all the rage across the Atlantic, is not likely to offer much French-language content any time soon: “French publishers are not ready to relinquish their titles to platforms that they believe are too tightly controlled by the manufacturers [of e-books].”