Culture connoisseurs will be spoilt for choice this weekend. Tomorrow marks the start of the 10th annual Emirates Airline Festival of Literature, the Middle East’s largest celebration of the written and spoken word. From its humble beginnings as an embryonic festival in 2009, it has become a cornerstone of the UAE’s cultural landscape and become an unmissable stop on the global circuit for authors, philosophers and poets. Last year's event attracted more than 44,000 visitors; this year will see 142 authors speaking over a packed 10-day extravaganza, of whom one-third are Arab writers and 18 are Emirati. Those figures mark a maturing of the literary and cultural scene of the UAE and are a reflection of the festival's original purpose to encourage and inspire budding regional writers.
Also beginning on Friday is the second Abu Dhabi Ideas Weekend, which aims to tackle complex social, scientific and technological challenges across the globe and features current thought leaders and prominent former politicians such as Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron. As delegates over the weekend discuss the polarisation of the modern world, an hour up the road in Dubai thousands will be united by a love of books, among them the great and the good of the literary world, including award-winning Syrian novelist, screenwriter and poet Khaled Khalifa, British poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy and author Anthony Horowitz. Increasingly, the UAE is becoming a modern-day salon in the great tradition of literary talking shops of old.
The global prestige this brings to the UAE is plain, but it is also important for the UAE and the region. The festival will shine a light on the growing canon of Arabic literature and hopefully add to it, as a packed children's programme will inspire a whole new generation to pick up books and perhaps begin writing themselves. As audiences in both cities explore some of the most important ideas sweeping the globe, the UAE – once renowned as a global hub for spices and silk – will be celebrating its newfound status as a trading post for the exchange of cultural knowledge and understanding.
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NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
The specs
Engine: 1.5-litre 4-cylinder petrol
Power: 154bhp
Torque: 250Nm
Transmission: 7-speed automatic with 8-speed sports option
Price: From Dh79,600
On sale: Now
A MINECRAFT MOVIE
Director: Jared Hess
Starring: Jack Black, Jennifer Coolidge, Jason Momoa
Rating: 3/5
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Game Changer
Director: Shankar
Stars: Ram Charan, Kiara Advani, Anjali, S J Suryah, Jayaram
Rating: 2/5
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Scoreline
Saudi Arabia 1-0 Japan
Saudi Arabia Al Muwallad 63’
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THE SPECS
Engine: 6.75-litre twin-turbocharged V12 petrol engine
Power: 420kW
Torque: 780Nm
Transmission: 8-speed automatic
Price: From Dh1,350,000
On sale: Available for preorder now
COMPANY%20PROFILE%20
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MOST%20POLLUTED%20COUNTRIES%20IN%20THE%20WORLD
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How much sugar is in chocolate Easter eggs?
- The 169g Crunchie egg has 15.9g of sugar per 25g serving, working out at around 107g of sugar per egg
- The 190g Maltesers Teasers egg contains 58g of sugar per 100g for the egg and 19.6g of sugar in each of the two Teasers bars that come with it
- The 188g Smarties egg has 113g of sugar per egg and 22.8g in the tube of Smarties it contains
- The Milky Bar white chocolate Egg Hunt Pack contains eight eggs at 7.7g of sugar per egg
- The Cadbury Creme Egg contains 26g of sugar per 40g egg
KILLING OF QASSEM SULEIMANI
Test
Director: S Sashikanth
Cast: Nayanthara, Siddharth, Meera Jasmine, R Madhavan
Star rating: 2/5
Concrete and Gold
Foo Fighters
RCA records
If you go
The flights
Emirates flies from Dubai to Seattle from Dh5,555 return, including taxes. Portland is a 260 km drive from Seattle and Emirates offers codeshare flights to Portland with its partner Alaska Airlines.
The car
Hertz (www.hertz.ae) offers compact car rental from about $300 per week, including taxes. Emirates Skywards members can earn points on their car hire through Hertz.
Parks and accommodation
For information on Crater Lake National Park, visit www.nps.gov/crla/index.htm . Because of the altitude, large parts of the park are closed in winter due to snow. While the park’s summer season is May 22-October 31, typically, the full loop of the Rim Drive is only possible from late July until the end of October. Entry costs $25 per car for a day. For accommodation, see www.travelcraterlake.com. For information on Umpqua Hot Springs, see www.fs.usda.gov and https://soakoregon.com/umpqua-hot-springs/. For Bend, see https://www.visitbend.com/.
The specs
Engine: Four electric motors, one at each wheel
Power: 579hp
Torque: 859Nm
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Price: From Dh825,900
On sale: Now
