The Open Book Festival is an annual literary festival held in Cape Town, South Africa with a focus on South African literature in an international context.
[2][3] Main venue of the event is located at the Fugard Theatre but also includes other nearby venues in Cape Town such as The District 6 Museum, The Homecoming Centre, the Townhouse Hotel, The Slave Lodge, The Museum, The National Gallery, Central Library and Lobby Books.
The event was initiated by Mervyn Sloman of The Book Lounge (a Cape Town-based bookshop) and Ben Williams of Books Live (a literary focused subsidiary of the South African newspaper Times Live).
[5] The festival was founded to bring the best literature in the world to Cape Town; to promote South African writing on an internationally; and to make books and literature more accessible to young readers.
[5] The event is noted for being more representative and drawing a wider range of authors than other South African book festivals.