The Macau Book Carnival 2016 opened last week at the Macao Polytechnic Institute, offering a total of approximately 30,000 books, magazines, CDs and other items, according to information published on the event’s Facebook page.
The Times visited the event yesterday in the early afternoon and observed around 50 people perusing books in English, Portuguese and Chinese across nearly 80 tables.
One table, labeled “C1” and located near the entrance to the hall, showcases numerous new and bestselling English and Portuguese books which detail the history of Macau and China, including a Portuguese version of Henry Kissinger’s “On China,” originally published in 2011.
“Macao in the Making of Early Sino-American Relations (1784-1844),” a 300-page book by Sibing He is available on the C1 table for just MOP80. On the same table is “Macau: History and Society,” a book that seeks to compensate for the overuse of Western sources in studies of Macau’s history by complementing them alongside Chinese sources. Written by Zhidong Hao, it is available for MOP250.
Stuart Braga’s “Making Impressions: a Portuguese family in Macau and Hong Kong, 1700 to 1945,” released in Macau last year, was also on sale for MOP480.
It details the lives of three Portuguese families living in Macau and Hong Kong and provides an insight into the social discrimination faced by Portuguese workers in British Hong Kong.
The other English-language tables are dispersed around the hall in no discernable order.
There are a number of fiction tables covered with classic novels such as George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” (MOP95), Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” (MOP80), “The Count of Monte Cristo” (MOP66) by Alexandre Dumas, and Jules Verne’s “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” (MOP57).
For the more modern readers, a set of “The Hunger Games” trilogy is on offer for MOP360, while there are hundreds of assorted English
language children’s books, many of which are priced at less than MOP100 per book.
Those interested in the social, political and economic non-fiction classics will be pleased to see a variety available on one of the tables toward the back of the hall. Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations” (MOP160), Karl Marx’s “Capital” (MOP212) and Friedrich Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom” (MOP240) are just a few of those on offer.
The carnival is open daily from 10:30 a.m. until 9:30 p.m., and will run untill Sunday night. It is organized by the Macao Association of Literacy Promotion and the Macao Polytechnic Institute, and sponsored by the Macao Foundation and the Cultural Institute.
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