India comes to Frankfurt
India will be the guest of honour at the 2006 Frankfurt Book Fair. To represent its massive, booming literature and publishing industry, India will be sending a somewhat meagre delegation of 33 writers. The Literary Saloon directs us to Outlook India’s Bibliofile column, which says that the selection “made by a steering committee headed by the secretary, HRD ministry and included other quasi-government organs like the Sahitya Akademi” has inevitably ruffled a few feathers among those many thousands of writers left off the list.
In order to help smooth things over, India’s National Book Trust has “sent 14 semi-finalists to the Leipzig Fair in March. Another lot will go in September. As further consolation prizes, it also sent a list of 150 books – an awesome balancing act of regional quotas — to German publishers to print before the fair. There was a bribe too: a subsidy of Rs2 a word for every book they published. But the ‘finicky’ Germans didn’t bite.”
According to Bibliofile, the NBT will also be screening a number of Indian movies at the Fair. Here’s hoping the ‘wet sari’ look takes off in Germany this fall.
Related links:
Read Outlook India’s Bibliofile column
The Frankfurt Book Fair’s “India Guest of Honour” site
