Come 18 January, the Boimela Prangan at Salt Lake will yet again come to life when the chief minister Mamata Bnaerjee will do the honours by inaugurating the 47th Calcutta Book Fair at 4 p.m. at the venue in the august presence of British High Commissioner Alex Ellis.
(photo:SNS)
Come 18 January, the Boimela Prangan at Salt Lake will yet again come to life when the chief minister Mamata Bnaerjee will do the honours by inaugurating the 47th Calcutta Book Fair at 4 p.m. at the venue in the august presence of Alex Ellis CMG, the British High Commissioner to India, Ms Alison Barrett MBE, director British Council India and Bani Basu, the noted author, along with other dignitaries.
The fair, to continue till 31 January, will have around 1,000 stalls and little magazines and small publishers too will have enough spaces. One of the key high points of this year’s fair, claimed Tridib Bhattacharya, president of the Book sellers’ Guild, would be for the first time senior Citizens’ Day and Chiro Natun Day, would be observed on 24 January, an interactive session to be attended by senior authors, senior publisher and senior reader like Abul Basar, Debojyoti Dutta and Saswati Adhikari.
There will be nine entry and exit gates in this year’s fair for the seamless movement of visitors. Of the nine gates, one of them would be in the mould of London Tower Bridge, another be the replica of Bethune School to mark the 175th foundation year. Other gates would be a Biswa Bangla gate and two gates would be named after Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay and Federico Garcia Lorca commemorating their 125th birth year.
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Two big halls of the fair, belonging to the English publications, have been named after Samaresh Mazumdar and Booker Prize winner A S Byatt, who passed away in 2023. Around 20 countries across the globe will participate in this year’s fair.
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