Greece will be the honored country at Belgrade's 54th International Book Fair to open on Monday.

The Greek pavilion will present 40 publishers and 12 authors whose books were published in 2009 in the Serbian language or/and have received special awards in Serbia, National Book Centre of Greece (EKEBI) Director Catherine Velissaris stated in a press conference on Thursday.

The publications will include books on ancient Greece, poetry, children's books, scientific books, Greek books translated into Serbian, Greek language textbooks, dictionaries and books with religious content.

Parallel events will include the screening of films from the Belgrade Film Library on "Greek literature in cinema".

Serbia will be the honored country at the 9th Thessaloniki International Book Fair in 2012.

Writer Dragan Velikic will open the 54th Belgrade International Book Fair on Monday, together with Greek academic Tanasis Valtinos, since this year Greece is the guest of honor, literary critic Vladislava Gordic-Petkovic, in charge of the fair's program, announced on Thursday.

Zeljko Ozegovic, the head of the organizing committee, said that the organizers made an effort to bring back the closeness between readers, writers and books and that meetings which should offer answers to important questions concerning books will be held during the fair which is open until November 1.

The ambassador of Greece to Serbia Dimostenis Stoidis expressed his gratitude since Greece is the guest of honor at one of the biggest book fairs in Europe and said that he was satisfied with the fact that great bilateral relations between Serbia and Greece grew even better through cooperation in the field of books and publishing.

The ambassador confirmed that Serbia will be the guest of honor at the book fair in Salonika in 2012.