Frankfurt  - Posters of 20th-century giants of Turkish literature stud a special exhibition in Frankfurt that is the centrepiece of Turkey's special-guest presentation at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

The exhibition was unveiled to the media Tuesday, a day before world book publishing's biggest annual event opens for a five-day run. The organizers hope to attract interest from publishers from 100 nations in publishing Turkish literature in translation.

More than 100 writers are introduced on the posters, each with a one-metre-high black-and-white photograph and a paragraph of text in English about their poetry, novels, essays or other writing.

Organizers said the exhibition aimed to show the complexity of Turkey's cultural heritage including ethnic minorities.

Sadik Karamustafa, the Istanbul-based designer of the exhibition entitled Palimpsest Reclaimed, stressed that the presentation was free of any governmental influence.

"It was totally organized by groups of non-governmental organizations," he told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

The show of giant posters is the main part of the exhibition, on the top floor of one of the Frankfurt fair pavilions, but there is also a display of valuable old books marking
500 years of multilingual publishing in Turkey.

The languages in the books include Kurdish and Hebrew. (dpa)