LARKANA: The week-long book fair held at Sir Shahnawaz Bhutto Memorial Library concluded the other day with the pledge to continue the tradition of organising such events regularly.

A host of publishers from Sindh, including the Sindh culture and tourism department, participated in the show held at the main lawn of the library. Avid readers from different backgrounds kept visiting the book stalls and were found busy finding the books of their choice.

A big number of books in English covering a variety of subjects, ranging from literature to politics, attracted the visitors. People also took interest in history books published by different publishers in Urdu and Sindhi.

Interestingly, a reader from Dadu, Sajid Soomro, said he loved to participate in such exhibitions to sell books to collect matter for his PhD assignment of assessing the degree of enthusiasm and mode of choice of readers in book fairs. He said people in this area had yet to develop the taste of selecting subjects and titles. He complained about low turnout of visitors in the exhibition. Asked if the number of purchasers was less than his expectation, he preferred silence.

A salesman of Rehbar Academy had also pointed towards the reduced number of visitors and purchasers due to school and college holidays.

Faisal, a salesman at Peacock Publishers from Karachi, said people in Larkana had outclassed readers of other districts in reading Sindhi literature and books in Sindhi language. Despite closure of educational institutions and libraries due to health concerns, students’ ratio was quite encouraging, he said.

Almost all book sellers in the exhibition offered 50 per cent discount while certain stalls restricted it to 30pc. The publisher of Standard Books, Karachi, was happy to be here, saying that he had not expected such tremendous response from readers. Witnessing the volume of enthusiasm, he had made up his mind to come here next time with bigger number of books and variety of titles and collection with 50pc discount.

He also linked a few episodes of dull response in terms of crowd during the week-long book fair with the closure of schools and colleges. But even then he looked satisfied with the experience he had outside Karachi.

A good number of readers were seen browsing around to find the original edition of books and when they failed to trace one out, they had to rely on second copy of the books they required. The inquisitive visitors also questioned why Sindhi Adabi Board, Sindhi Language Authority, National Book Foundation and Oxford University Press had not turned up to put up their stalls. For this, the organisers had the simple and patent reply to offer: ‘next time’ more publishers would be invited, even from Islamabad and Lahore, to participate in the book fair that gradually was getting popular.

It had been observed that except for the Sindh culture and tourism department, no other government organisations were there.

Kamran Shaikh of Sindhica Academy said the response was “tremendous”.

Published in Dawn, March 10th, 2020