A lavish catalogue of more than HK$50 million worth of rare books and maps goes to the printers this week as major dealers around the world prepare for the first Hong Kong International Antiquarian Bookfair.
The 120-page catalogue features writers from the 16th century to today, with a particular focus on China.
'This is Hong Kong's first western-style fair,' said Chris Feain of Sydney's Cornstalk Bookshop who, with Chris Li of Swindon Books, is co-ordinating the three-day event, which will open on November 30.
Mr Feain said about 60 dealers would offer nearly five centuries of mostly English-language fiction and non-fiction at prices from HK$500.
But the star of the fair, to occupy the entire fifth floor of One Pacific Place, Admiralty, will be a 1543 first edition of De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium [On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres] by Nicolaus Copernicus, carrying a price tag of HK$11.72 million.
More affordable is a May 1965 first edition, first printing of Mao Zhu Xi Yu Lu (The Quotations of Chairman Mao), with an endorsement by the later-disgraced Lin Biao, for HK$400,000. There will also be Ming dynasty medical books and accounts of the opium wars and the Boxer and Taiping rebellions.