Sri Lanka book stall at World Book Fair

THE World Book Fair 2006 opened in New Delhi yesterday comprised a stall for books published in Sri Lanka.

The Fair is open till February 4.

The Sri Lanka stall run by the Book Sellers' Association of Ceylon and the Sri Lanka Book Publishers' Association will have hundreds of books published by Sri Lankan publishers. The books ranging from ethnic conflict to folk tales for children are in English and Tamil languages.

The bi-annual fair is the largest book fair in the world after the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany and Book Expo in the USA. Nearly 20 Sri Lankan book sellers and publishers will visit the fair.

The stalls allocated to Sri Lanka are in the International Publishers Section which is one of the most visited areas of the 9-day book fair.

Book Sellers' Association of Ceylon President Vijitha Yapa, said the Book Sellers' Association together with the Publishers' Association has embarked on a programme to make the world aware of the wide range of books on different subjects.

"We have exhibited Sri Lankan books at book fairs in London, Frankfurt, Tokyo and also worked closely with all those in the industry to have the Colombo Book Fair annually. Last year over 500,000 people visited the fair. This is an indication of the thirst for books in our land".