Why does Kinokuniya give so much space to a madman?

I love Kinokuniya. The store in The Dubai Mall is far and away the best bookshop in the UAE, and the only place where I can feel I am back among the shelves of Foyles, the London bookshop I used to frequent addictively.

The Japanese-owned chain has gone from strength to strength across the world by giving book lovers what they want: books. Sure, they do some children’s playthings, but tasteful ones with an educational focus. No cheap trash. And no videos or CDs.

The store is a constant reassurance, for an old inky like me, that the printed world is not dead, and can survive and even flourish in the digital age.

As further vindication, the store is invariably packed. Kinokuniya seems to have hit on a winning commercial formula, and I wish they would open a branch in DIFC to save me the trip downtown.

But …

Somebody in the store's hierarchy has got it seriously wrong on the display side. When I was there at the weekend, nosing around the history and political section, I was amazed to see a substantial display given over to one work: Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.

The book was given a whole shelf to itself in the current affairs section, with five front covers confronting you in a Nuremberg-style phalanx. Biographies of Churchill and Stalin only got one; Anne Frank’s recent republication got two, but way down on the bottom shelf.

Do not get me wrong. I believe everybody has the right to buy and read Mein Kampf. I would never be among the ranks of the book-burners, even though this is the seminal work of genocidal racism of the 20th century.

But to promote it so lavishly?

Whoever did the display has clearly not read the book. I was forced to as an undergraduate history student, and I can tell you it is a turgid, tortuous trial. If you have not got a detailed working knowledge of far rightwing German politics of nearly 100 years ago, it is virtually incomprehensible.

Even the most important bits – ambitions to invade the Soviet Union, the “final solution”, violent extremism of all kinds – are disappointing, because when Hitler wrote it (1924) he was only in the formative stages of his murderous psychopathy, and anyway had no power to implement any of his deranged ideas.

I was so amazed at the display it got in Kinokuniya I whipped out my iPhone and took a pic, which I then tweeted with a message that conveyed my incredulity.

A short while later, back came a tweet from @KinokuniyaDubai: “It’s one of the best sellers in the store”, followed by another: “Customers are from different parts of the world they are not only from Dubai.”

That is good news at least.

Then: “The book is five-star rated in Amazon and other stores and more than 800 customers reviewed it,” and “you can read customers’ reviews maybe you can know why.”

[To be precise, its Amazon rating is 3.8 stars out of 5.]

I tweeted back that maybe the reason Mein Kampf was selling so well was that it was being hugely over-marketed by the prominent display.

And I also sent the people at Kinokuniya one very apposite review: “A boring tome that I have never been able to read,” was the contemporary verdict of one B Mussolini, whom you might have expected to be a little more sympathetic.

Anyway, I went back to the store on Monday evening, and was able to claim a small victory in my Tweet-feud. The Mein Kampf display was still five covers wide, but had been moved down to the very bottom shelf.

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