QUILLBLOG

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

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