How Books are Booming in the Middle East

With Islamic State militants taking greater control of strategic towns in Syria and Iraq, the publishing heartland of the Middle East is being thrown into disarray.

These traditionally more literature-oriented countries have long suffered from a lack of coherent cross-border book distribution but that problem is now compounded by Isis disrupting the major arteries.

But while the sale of books may be under threat in the Arab heartland, a significant increase in book purchasing and literacy, and in particular female literacy, in the countries of the Gulf is more than compensating for this.