The Guest of Honor Programme at the Frankfurt Book Fair plays an important role in the promotion of
literature and the publishing industry of each country. The key is creating business and cultural
connections that remain. In this master's thesis, we compared five past guest countries, Finland,
Georgia, Norway, Canada and Spain in terms of website preservation, organized events, literary
representatives and number of translations. We conducted a semi-structured interview with the
head of the Guest of Honor Programme and used the method of historical research and qualitative
literature review. We have found that the websites of the guest countries are still available but not
active. The most frequent events were talks and round tables, the least frequent were formal
gatherings. Most events were organized on Saturdays. Events take place at the fair as well as
outside it. In the earlier years, most of the literary representatives were men, but that has changed.
The last guest country was the closest to gender equality. Most representatives belonged to the
age group of 40 to 49 years. Most countries chose one male and one female speaker at the opening
ceremony. In terms of number of translations we cannot claim that the impact of Guest of Honor
program is sustainable.
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