World Book Fair to bring Asia under the spotlight

NEW DELHI, February 5: Asia will be the focus of the 13th World Book Fair to be inaugurated on February 7 at Pragati Maidan. The eight-day l...

NEW DELHI, February 5: Asia will be the focus of the 13th World Book Fair to be inaugurated on February 7 at Pragati Maidan. The eight-day long fair, to be opened by Union Human Resource Development Minister S.R.Bommai, will bring together writers, academics, poets, novelists and other eminent personalities from several countries including Japan, Brazil, Singapore, Dubai, Zimbabwe, Israel, Iran, USA and Britain.

The chairman of the National Book Trust, Dr Sumatheendra Nadig, and director Durgadas Gupta said that over a thousand publishers, book-sellers and distributors from India and abroad were expected to participate in the fair.

The World Book Fair is being organised by the National Book Trust in collaboration with the Federation of Indian Publishers, Federation of Educational Publishers, Akhil Bhartiya Hindi Prakashak Sangh, Delhi State Booksellers’ and Publishers’ Association, Federation of Publishers and Booksellers Association in India and CAPEXIL.

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The Fair has been granted 20,000 square metresof space against the total requirement of 27,000 square metres and Nadig and Gupta said that the number of participants would have been considerably higher but for the constraint of space.

The fair, the largest to be held in Asia, will feature panel discussions on Asia and the publishing industry and well known personalities like K.S.Duggal, Kapila Vatsyayan, Mallika Sengupta, Tarannum Riyaz, British novelists A.L.Kennedy, Farrukh Dhondy and Shena Mackay are expected to participate in special programmes and discussions.

The most important feature of the fair will be the Jnanpeeth awardees meet on February 12. This will be attended by Prof U.R. Ananthamurthy, Narayan Reddy, Sitakant Mahapatra, Qurratul-Ain-Haider, Mahasveta Devi and Ali Sardar Jafri who will express their views on India since independence and interact with authors and readers.