French book lovers get a place to browse and buy

Dubai: French books are coming into Dubai by the tonne every month and filling the void francophone expatriates were feeling for a lack of the French written word.

Only 50 French bookshops have been set up worldwide and one of them, which is up and running on Shaikh Zayed Road, recently celebrated its first birthday in Dubai.

Culture & Co opened its doors last April and caters to the growing number of French speakers in the country.

Real need

"There are about 10,000 French people and 100,000 French speakers which include North Africans, Canadians, and French speaking Arabs in the UAE," said Renata Sader, Culture & Co founder.

"Before you could get French books in some supermarkets or multimedia stores but not a very broad selection. I felt there was a real need to open up a French bookstore. It was never a childhood dream for me to start a book store but when I realised there was a demand I did a course in France," said Sader.

A resident in Dubai for seven years, Sader was previously in Jordan. Her training is in languages and she speaks five of them, qualifying herself as a translator.

Culture & Co stocks around 10,000 titles including children's books, educational books, books with accompanying CDs, fiction books, specialised books on art, cookery, gardening, as well as contemporary books on geopolitical issues.

The store not only stocks books in French written by French authors but translations of books by authors of many different nationalities.

"I read a lot of literature, especially foreign literature. My favourite author at the moment is a Hungarian writer called Agota Kristof. She's written a trilogy I recently discovered which is very dark but very well written," said Sader.