Sri Lanka It's Happening

September 18, 2007

The ninth edition of the Colombo International Book Fair just ended. I have attended many of the previous one but this one is special because My father is one of the five joint winners of the First Swarna Pusthaka award.

The award ceremony was held the day before the exhibition started. On the next day, the authors were all invited as guests of honor at the opening Ceremony and asked to light the traditional oil lamp. Naturally we family members tagged along.

According to the organizers this it the most successfull event yet. There needs be no doubt about it. They have been slowly improving over the years by thursday they had reached the 400,000 visitors mark. That's the number they had for the entire show in 2006. I am sure they hit the 600,000 target quite easily.

It seems that the competition for stalls is intense. If my memory serves me right, most book sellers are occupying the exact same positions they had last year. So it would seem that most stalls are booked for the next year's show even before the current one is finished!

Lavish praise has to be tempered with a negative comment as well. A huge percentage of the books sold happen to be text books and children's books. This is not a fault of the organizers but just more proof that the reading habit is dying.

more photos at my photoblog.

Posted by raditha at September 18, 2007 6:44 AM