JEDDAH: Abdul Aziz Khoja, Minister of Culture and Information, will oversee on Tuesday the launch of Jeddah Literary Cultural Club's annual Text Reading Forum, this year held under the headline “Language and Mankind”. The three-day event, the eleventh of its kind, will take place at the Sofitel Al-Hamra Hotel on Palestine Street and host over two dozen literary figures from the Kingdom joined also by prominent names from Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia. Discussions will center on six main themes: Language and Political Discourse; Language and Religious Discourse; Language and Cultural Discourse; Language and Identity; Language and Literature, and Language and Media Discourse. According to Abdul Muhsin Al-Qahtani, President of Jeddah Literary Cultural Club, the forum will this year honor departed literary figure Ahmad Abdul Ghafour Attar for his lifetime's work in thought, linguistics and literature. Saudi first woman head at Paris institute The Minister of Culture and Information, meanwhile, has praised the appointment of Muna Khazandar as Director General of the Arab World Institute in Paris and described it as a “source of pride for all Saudis and Arabs”. “The unanimous agreement of all Arab ambassadors in Paris on her nomination for the position was achieved with the backing of the Saudi leadership in view of Muna Khazandar's qualifications and academic and managerial abilities,” Khoja said. Khazandar is the first woman to occupy the post at what is one of France's most prestigious cultural bodies, and prior to the appointment was secretary of the Department of Contemporary Arts and Photography at the institute's museum, a position she took up in 1987. Khazandar, who will assume her new duties at the beginning of next month, expressed her gratitude to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques and Minister Khoja as well as Arab ambassadors for their backing. “I will work to my utmost in my new post to strengthen the relationship between France and the Arab World and particularly the GCC states which have been underrepresented on the French cultural scene,” she said. Khazandar was educated in Saudi Arabia followed by Switzerland and France, where she studied at the Sorbonne.
