In Japan book fairs enjoy high regard. During the 1950s and 60s, Swiss publishers participated in some such events. At first neither Pro Helvetia nor the Swiss diplomats supported these efforts.

Until the 1960s, Pro Helvetia rarely considered contemporary literature in its international activities.

Hugo Loetscher’s career as a writer and journalist eloquently illustrates the literary dimension of Switzerland’s cultural policy abroad.

In 1977, the writer Etienne Barilier, born in the canton of Vaud in 1947, published Le Chien Tristan. In this novel, the story of a double murder in the Swiss Institute in Rome is combined with contemplation of the arts, aesthetics, and the quest for beauty. Spurred on by the momentum that inspired German Romantic music, the book’s main characters, Swiss PhD students living at the institute, go as far as to take over the great composers’ identities.

The book exhibitions display the publishers' know-how and the wealth of Swiss book culture.

In 1948, the French geographer André Siegfried supplies the Federal Authorities with an excellent tool for propaganda.

Dans un livre publié en 1981 à New York, Pro Helvetia devient PURS.

From the beginning, Pro Helvetia used the translation of books considered to represent the country as a tool to promote Swiss culture abroad.