36th Annual Buenos Aires Book Fair

One of our tour books highly recommended this Feria de Libros as not to be missed.  It occurs once a year and apparently librarians from far and wide travel to Buenos Aires for the event.  We were quite disappointed upon arriving at the festival to find a glorified Barnes and Noble that you had to pay to enter.  All the books were new and overpriced and the fair seemed to be run by large book stores who had shelled out an unnecessary amount of money to create mid-sized commercial bookstores throughout the massive event space, much of which was catered to children.  Here are some photos of our experiences in the fair...

Apparently, we missed all the drama: later that day, violence broke out at the release of a book by journalist, Gustavo Noriega.  The book's controversial subject matter (which apparently criticizes the corrupt government statisticians) provoked some 10-15 people to begin throwing chairs into the audience.