The Big Read
Egypt / U.S.

The Big Read Egypt/U.S. is a collaborative cultural initiative that includes the organization of public events around a single book, in a certain community. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina chose to start with To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, both translated into Arabic within the framework of the Big Read project. Also available in Arabic translation is the novel The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. The project encompasses a lot of activities from February to December 2009, including lectures, discussions, film screenings, play readings, essay and art contests, and online activities, in addition to distributing a number of free book copies.

The idea of the Big Read goes back to 2004, when the National Endowment for the Arts published Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, a report which identified a critical decline in reading for pleasure among American adults. The National Endowment for the Arts reacted by developing the Big Read initiative, together with Arts Midwest and the Institute of Museums and Library Services. The idea was to supply local institutions with a collection of books by “great“ American authors, and encourage them to choose one of the books to organize public events concerning it.

Recently, two works by two great non-American authors were added to the Big Read collection in the United States: The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Russian writer Leo Tolstoi, and The Thief and the Dogs by Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz. The idea of exchanging readings between Americans and non-Americans emerged; the Big Read Egypt/U.S. was born, aiming at introducing American literature to the Egyptian reader, and Egyptian literature to the American reader.

The Big Read Egypt/U.S. is a collaborative Global Cultural Initiative project of the U.S. Department of State and the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, and the Institute of Museums and Library Services. The Big Read Egyptian partners include the American University in Cairo, the Egyptian Association for Educational Resources (E-ERA) and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.