CAMAGÜEY.- The Old Friends book fair emerged in April 2019 dressed in generous images, among these, the exquisite oil portrait as only the endearing journalist José Aurelio Paz knew how to draw with words: “a whirlwind of hands-books has risen”. Four years later he changed the concept, without losing the vindicating essence of literature.

From August 10th to 13th, this event of the Enrique José Varona Provincial Center for Books and Literature (CPLL) will take place at the Casino Campestre, with sales hours from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., seasoned with a cultural animation with stage artists, musicians and impromptu artists to accompany writers, promoters and readers.

“Old Friends came up with those books that were dusty, yellow, slow moving. Today there are no such books in Camagüey anymore. It keeps the same name because books are our old friends but it changes its concept”, Yunielkis Naranjo Guerra, director of the CPLL, explained to Adelante.

Among the weighted titles, the Calendar Awards and the Portico Collection, among others, from Editorial Ácana stand out mainly, because the fair intentionally coincides with the Literary Crusade. "It is a gift from the Book Center to the Hermanos Saíz Association," insisted Naranjo Guerra.

This fair focused on commercial management based on the support of an effective sense of cultural promotion, because a tour of the province's bookstores in 2019 revealed the existence of copies that represented more than 70,000 pesos. Hence the strategy to make them attractive in the eyes of potential readers.

Those who participated in the first edition of Viejos amigos, between April 26th and 28th at the La Comarca Literary Café, assure that no one left without a copy saved under their arm, as well as comforted by the exchange with authors and artists in general, that always brings together the calling institution.

We dedicate, then, the memory to the first enthusiasts of the Old Friends fair, beloved intellectuals such as the historian Elda Cento Gómez or José Aurelio Paz himself, José Martí National Prize for Journalism, who are no longer physically here.

Regarding the good vibes generated by this initiative to recover the soul of those copies that had been neglected on dusty shelves, José Aurelio Paz published the text Let's not blame the guilt, in the special edition of the Alero newsletter, where he emphasized: "Let's not blame the blame. There is always a second flight if ingenuity and dreams copulate, as has happened in this fair of rare and old books, in which a whirlwind of hands-books has risen, in that inexplicable magic with which literature, like nature itself, , place hummingbirds in our ears and honey on our lips.”

Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez