SEAMUS Heaney and the German Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, will jointly open the Frankfurt Book Fair in October, the fair's organisers said yesterday.
The Nobel Prize winning poet is one of more than 30 Irish writers who will attend the fair, the largest event of its kind which last year attracted some 9,000 publishers from 97 countries.
"We may be one of the minnows of Europe, but . . . culturally we have some of the giants of the world," said Mr Lar Cassidy, director of the "Ireland and it's Diaspora" festival which will accompany the fair.
Mr Cassidy promised this year's event would be a festive occasion with the sponsors, Guinness, planning to run an "Irish Pub" beside a glass pavilion at the centre of the fair.
Come the autumn there will be a whole flock of us. Hopefully awe will make a fiesta, a fleadh, a dance and everything else out of lit" said the novelist Edna O'Brien.
Other writers to attend will include Roddy Doyle, John Banville - literary editor of The Irish Times - Joseph O'Connor, and Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill.
The organisers plan a strong emphasis on Northern Ireland writers.
The book fair runs from October 2nd to 7th, after an official, opening ceremony and concert attended by Dr Kohl, the Minister for the Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, Mr Higgins, and Dr Heaney.
Related Irish cultural events are planned for the autumn, with up to 700 exhibitions and concerts scheduled to take place in 500 German towns in September.
German publishers are lining up to produce translations of Irish novels, some of which should be ready in time for the fair, according to the Dublin based Irish literature promotion agency ISLE.
"Business is really booming in Germany and there has been a significant increase in the last few months," an ISLE official, Mr Mark Cable, said. ISLE provides" grant aid for translations of little known Irish contemporary writers.