'Cairo writes, Beirut publishes and Baghdad reads'' is an old adage throughout the Arab world that no longer faithfully tells the story of the present.

While the world awaits the Iraqi cultural renaissance, Beirut is now not only the ideal place for publishing houses who publish in Arabic, but is also a competitor of Cairo's in terms of the quality of the narrative and essays produced from the Atlantic to the Gulf and was last year's Arab culture capital.

Strengthened by such a position, the Lebanese port is currently hosting the 54th Arab Book Fair, which, along with the Cairo and Dubai fairs, is one of the region's three most important literary events.

With around sixty Arab publishing houses hosted and over 200 Lebanese groups, the Beirut Fair, which ends on Thursday, features a record number of exhibitors. The number was only surpassed last year, when the event coincided with the city's nomination as culture capital, which attracted an extraordinary number of Arab and foreign publishing houses to the Beirut Fair.

''Without counting last year's edition, this year we are beating the record number of visitors too,'' Fadi Tamim, the director of the Arab cultural club and one of the event's organisers, tells ANSAmed. ''The Beirut Book Fair is not only attended by devoted readers and sector workers, but also by pupils and entire families with small children,'' he says proudly.

The stands of some of the more well-known Lebanese and Arab publishing houses stand side by side with exhibition spaces dedicated to new literature and essays, with interesting new children's books and works by European and American authors translated into Arabic.

The number of religious publishing houses, most of them Sunni Muslim, has also grown compared to previous years, and there has is an unprecedented group of Iranian publishers with releases in both Arabic and Farsi.

Among those sifting through pages on the book stands are Italian students of Arabic, who have arrived in Beirut from Cairo or the closer city of Damascus, so as not to miss this traditional literary event.

The Italians present at the Fair include representatives from Castelvecchi and Mesogea, two publishers respectively specialising in essays and literature.