Kolkata to Host Book Fair to Celebrate Bengali New Year

The event will include panel discussions and workshops on current problems and international literature.

on Apr 14, 2023

Kolkata to Host Book Fair to Celebrate Bengali New Year

Organizers announced on Thursday that a book fair would be organized in Kolkata from April 16 to 25 to commemorate Nabo Borsho, or Bengali New Year.

The event, Nabo Borsho Boi Utsav, will feature 75 well-known publishers. The Publishers and Booksellers' Guild, which also hosts the yearly International Kolkata Book Fair, will organize it.

The book fair will be hosted in the city's Jodhpur Park neighborhood for the second time. It will be held for the first time in February 2021, according to the guild's general secretary, Tridib Chatterjee.

"The previous edition of the book fair did not draw a large crowd because the COVID pandemic was raging and curbs were in place."

He said that the organizers are hoping for more sales than the last event in 2021, which brought in less than Rs 1 crore.

"We want to bring back the tradition of giving books on special occasions like weddings, birthdays, college farewells, and Nabo Borsho." "We are organizing such mini book fairs' across the state as part of the guild's initiative to promote book purchasing and reading," he added.

The event will include panel discussions and workshops on current problems and international literature.

The latest edition of the International Kolkata Book Fair, held from January 31 to February 12 this year, sold books worth Rs 25.5 crore, with over 26 lakh visitors visiting roughly 900 exhibitors.

He noted that the Nabo Borsho Boi Utsav would allow many people in south Kolkata who could not attend the International Kolkata Book Fair, which was hosted in Central Park in Salt Lake, some 15 km distant in the northern half, to pick up their beloved titles.