This was the 33rd anniversary of the Interliber book fair in Croatia. The larger publishers who were present were especially happy with the sales, as some of them even doubled their figures compared to last year.

The event hosted 250 publishing companies from eight countries - Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Iran, Germany, the U.S., Great Britain, Northern Ireland and Croatia.

Among the most successful books were the global bestseller The Glassblower of Murano by Marina Fiorato, who also was a guest of Interliber, Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder, The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo, The Mistress of Rome by K. Quinn and One Day by David Nicholls.

Thousands of copies of 1001 Nights, translated by the Sarajevo-based academic and Arabist Esad Dudaković, were sold at the fair. This is no surprise as a Turkish soap opera by the same name is currently being broadcast in Croatia with high viewer ratings.

The most successful books by local authors were those by Ante Tomić and Miljenko Jergović. "Cudo u Poskokovoj Dragi" (The Miracle at Poskok's Creek) by Ante Tomic is a study of the rural mentality in the mountains of Dalmatia. It is a humourous story of the family of Joze Poskok, an old man living in the mountains who refuses to accept any of the products of modern civilisation, even electricity. However, his four sons try to make steps toward opening up to the world.

On the other hand, "Psi na Jezeru" (Dogs at the Lake) is a simple tale of loneliness, a new novel of identity and exile. The story unfolds in two narratives and it begins when a Canadian guest in a Belgrade hotel suffers a stroke. The story of what goes on in the head of the man in deep coma is told in the first person. The second narrative is told in the third person and it is the story of a young man who, after acquiring very scattered information about the unknown guest, becomes obsessed and bound to him.

Together with the Croatian publishing company VBZ, Interliber awarded prizes for the best unpublished novel in 2010. The prize went to the Belgrade based author Aleksandar Novaković for his novel The Leader. It is the story of a Serb army captain who committed crimes during the Balkan wars 1912-1913 which were an interlude to the First World War.

In his interview with Southeast Europe: People and Culture, Miljenko Jergović, president of the selection jury said that this year's competition was the strongest in all the nine years the competition has been running. He said that all 13 runner-up manuscripts were "more or less" equally good books but that, eventually, the jury unanimously voted for The Leader.

"It is an extremely well written, impressive, exciting, poetic and modern book," Jergović said.

“Considering the fact that the action takes place on St. Vitus’s day in 1914, one could imagine that this was a historical novel, and yet it is not,” Jergović said.

“It is a book about the Balkans, about the Balkan wars and Balkan officers and our earlier and most recent wars. More than anything else, it is an exceptional modern novel” said the well-known author who was this time the president of the jury.

The winner of this year's competition will receive an award of around €13,700. The winner, Aleksandar Novaković, was born in Belgrade in 1975. He has written novels, plays, aphorisms, poems and short stories and he is a member of a rock band called "Skribomani."

Interliber presented a wide selection of books by a number of different authors. Besides introducing new titles, there were many round tables, conversations with authors, literary workshops and meetings between publishers and bookshop owners.

Over the course of the past few years in Croatia, there has been a marked growth in the number of book titles published. This has resulted in more than 7,000 titles being published this year, either for the first time or reprints.

The publishers say that in a country of 4.4 million people, around 2,500 novels are published a year. The effects of the crisis over the last few years has become evident in the fact that do-it-yourself books as well as books on finance management and cookbooks were among those with the highest demand. In the same period however, there has also been a notable increase in the demand for books by foreign authors.