Love in the air

On Friday the colour of the Amar Ekushey Granthamela-2015 was yellow and yesterday it got drenched in the red of love.

From morning, young people mostly dressed in red, women and little girls with flower tiaras began to arrive at the fair despite the busy traffic of the hartal-free city.

The relaxed mood of the young visitors would remind one of Anisul Hoque's book “Bikkhober Dingulite Prem” published by Prothoma Prokashan during this year's book fair.

“The book is based on the democratic movement against (former military dictator) Ershad in the late 80s and 1990 and our life in Buet (Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology),” said Hoque, one of the best-selling authors of the present day.

A good number of Hoque's new books including fiction “Mayer Kachhe Fera” published by Somoy Prokashon, collection of his essays, fiction for teenagers “Bhoyongkor Dipe Boka Goyenda” by Prothoma are also available at this year's fair.

Hoque, also a journalist, screenwriter and dramatist, received a number of awards for his literary works including the Bangla Academy award for literature in 2011.

Praising the spacious organisation of this year's fair in the Suhrawardy Udyan portion, Hoque said all of the people for whom the arrangement was made could not all come to the fair because of the political unrest.

He mentioned how readers outside Dhaka commented about their inability to visit the fair this year on his Facebook account where he uploaded the first two chapters of “Bikkhober Dingulite Prem”.

“This year books cannot be sent outside Dhaka either. In other years, books which came out in the fair would be sent immediately to Chittagong, Sylhet, Rajshahi and Rangpur,” he said.

On e-books, Hoque opined that Bangladeshis still preferred hard copies. “Even in America when a new book is published, 70 percent comes out in hard copy and about 30 percent in e-book form.”

About translation, Hoque opined that literature works of a certain country get translated because of the importance of the country in the global political and economical scenario rather than of the significance of that state's literature.

“For example now Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and China are of interest to foreigners. At one time we had witnessed that Japan suddenly became the centre of all attention when America started helping Japan after World War II,” he said, adding how Japanese and later Chinese writers were getting Nobel Prizes then.

Keeping pace with the Valentine's Day crowd, 147 new books arrived at the fair out of which 36 were fictions and another 36 were on poetry.

Besides, 12 new books along with a poetry volume “J Sur Baje Prane” by poet Anindita Mukta were launched at the fair yesterday.