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During the whole of this week, the historic Turkish city of Istanbul will be dedicated to books as the world-famous book fair welcomes publications by writers from twenty-seven countries worldwide.

Event organizers hope that this year''s Book Fair will attract more visitors than last year''s impressive figure of 350,000 attendees, with 300 different activities being laid on for guests until next Sunday.

The Istanbul Book Fair is one of the most important of its kind in the world and the last few years, in particularly, have seen a rise in the amount of international literature: This year, Basque prose also have their place in Istanbul, including a Turkish version of Bernardo Atxaga''s most famous novel Obabakoak. Atxaga himself was also in the city on Monday, visiting the Turkish publishing houses that have translated and published several of his children''s books and three of his novels.

Atxaga also revealed that, following its excellent reception at the Frankfurt Book Fair, his next novel, Seven Houses in France, will also be translated in Turkish.

"Turkey has a large home-based market (for literature) in their own language so it is relatively difficult to interest them in books that require translation," Atxaga commented during an interview with EITB. "But I have a feeling Seven Houses will be released here."

The Reno-based writer also took part in a round table discussion entitled ''How to change the world with words¡, which was chaired by the Director of Istanbul''s Cervantes Institute, Antonio Gil de Carrasco alongside Catalans novelists Cristina Fernandez Cubas and Carmen Riera.