PESHAWAR: A large number of students, faculty members, research scholars and book-lovers turned up at the three-day book fair held at Islamia College University here on Wednesday.

Around 300,000 titles on variety of topics were displayed at 65 bookstalls for sale at 50 percent discount. The book fair was held by Islami Jamiat Talaba. The publishers and book sellers from Multan, Bahawalpur, Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and Peshawar displayed their stalls at the fair.

The stall owners said that book of Maulana Abul ala Maududi ‘Khilafat Aur Malukiat, Bacha Khan Baba’s book ‘Meri Zindagi Aur Jadojahad’ and Wali Khan’s book ‘Facts are Fact’ were among the bestsellers in addition to other history books.

Around 300,000 titles on variety of topics displayed at 65 bookstalls

“The ratio of girl visitors remained quite encouraging compared to last year while the sale of various titles on the first day also registered a marked improvement,” a stall owner told Dawn.

Opening the three-day seventh book fair, Dr Habib Ahmad, the vice-chancellor of ICU, said that such positive activities should be organised to benefit students and enlarge horizon of their knowledge and creative skills.

“I appreciate such healthy activities on the campus and would like students as well as faculty members to encourage the same and try to benefit from such events. The true spirit of knowledge lies in the books, which satisfies one’s search and thirst for the genuine scholarship,” he said.

Senator Mushtaq Ahmad Khan while visiting the book fair said that the fair and other such efforts definitely contributed towards promoting not only book culture but also helped evolving an attitude of youngsters to devote more time to reading and learning. He said that written words would remain sacred and could never be replaced by any other source of knowledge.

Salman Bin Ihsan, chief of IJT at ICU, told this scribe that books on medical, engineering, computer science, agriculture, information technology, journalism, psychology, law, religion, politics, history, philosophy and literature were available to readers at an affordable price.

Tahmina Gul, a student of the department of history at University of Peshawar, said that such events helped to promote love for written words.

Riaz Ghafur, a young scholar while sharing his views, said that it pleased him much to see that students purchased titles of their choice and needs. He said that most of them were found to be keenly interested in buying books out of their text courses which meant they wanted to read a different and independent version of things around them.

Published in Dawn, December 13th, 2018