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. The event includes over 150 literary events,^[1] featuring over 100 authors over 5 days. Although South African literature features prominently literature from across the world is also featured with both Anglophone and Francophone authors featuring prominently in the festivals events.^[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.^[4]

The first Open Book festival was held in 2011. 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.^[6]

Most of the 150 events fall into one of the following sub-events with particular focuses:^[7]

• Poetica: a two-day-long programme of events focused on poetry.
• Comic Book Fest: focus on comic books and graphic novels.
• Authors: number of panel discussions, workshops, presentations, and other events focused on authors.
• Youth Programme: a number of events that focuses on encouraging a love for books amongst young people.

• In 2013 the Open Book Festival broke the Guinness Book of World Records for the world's longest book chain consisting of 2586 books.^[8]