Archives

From Upali Rupasinghe in Kolkata)

The curtain came down on the 12-day long Kolkata Book Fair, the world's largest festival of publishers and book lovers on Sunday giving high hopes to Sri Lankan book publishing eagles to hold it under the theme Sri Lanka next year.

The officials of the Publishers and Book-Sellers' Guild have confirmed receiving a formal suggestion to hold the "Kolkata Book Fair - 2003" on Sri Lanka Theme and their preliminary discussions with Mr. Vijitha Yapa, President of the Book Sellers' Association of Ceylon.

"Let it come as a proposal with a detailed report which will be taken up at the next general meeting scheduled to be held in April this year," they said.

Mr. Vijitha Yapa visited the Delhi Book Fair leading a 15 member delegation of Sri Lankan Book Publishers. From there he made a short visit to Kolkata and met the officials of the organising body of the Kolkata Book Fair.

Mr. Vijitha Yapa talking to reporters in Kolkata said that the delegation visited the Delhi Book Fair not merely to sell their publications but also to influence the Indian publishers and book sellers to import books published in Sri Lanka on different subjects.

"In Delhi we had one book stall and there were 600 books on different titles," he said.

In Sri Lanka, in every book shop in Colombo and other cities sell books and literature published in India, but nothing is found published in Sri Lanka, other than a few on the ethnic conflict which is published in India or elsewhere. For India Sri Lanka is not a foreign country but a neighbouring country. Further we are both SAARC countries. Books give awareness of each others culture and social aspects. We are determined to promote the idea of holding next years Kolkata Book Fair under the theme," Sri Lanka, he said.

For this we need funds, Sri Lanka's High Commission in New Delhi has appreciated the proposal. We will approach Sri Lanka's Tourism and Cultural Ministries and the Indian High Commission in Sri Lanka to promote the suggestion, he added.

Along with the Book Fair we shall have a Sri Lankan food festival and various cultural programmes, Mr. Yapa said.

In October this year Sri Lanka would participate in the SAARC Book Fair scheduled to be held in Dhaka, Bangladesh, he said.

According to Mr. Kalyan Shah, the Secretary of the Publishers and Booksellers' Guild around two million book lovers visited this year's fair including 4000 authors and leading book distributors and the sales figures from the 600-odd books stalls would have exceeded Rs. 170 million.

News | Business | Features | Editorial | Security
Politics | World | Letters | Sports | Obituaries |

Produced by Lake House
Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
Comments and suggestions to :Web Manager