One of the nine gates of the upcoming International Kolkata Book Fair will be a replica of the London Tower Bridge and another will be of Bethune School, to mark its 175th year.
There will be a Biswa Bangla Gate and two of the gates will be named after Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay and Federico García Lorca, commemorating their 125th birth anniversary, officials of the Publishers and Booksellers Guild, the organisers of the annual event, said on Monday.
The fair will be inaugurated on January 18 and continue till 31st. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee will inaugurate the fair at the Boimela Prangan in Central Park in Salt Lake’s Karunamoyee.
The United Kingdom is the theme country for this edition of the fair, the duration of which will coincide with holidays such as January 23 and 26 and weekends.
“Special trains will run on the East-West Metro route between Sealdah and Sector V during the fair. The autorickshaw fares for the fair venue have been fixed in consultation with officers of the Bidhannagar Police Commissionerate,” Tridib Kumar Chatterjee, president of the guild, said.
Senior officials in the transport department said additional bus services are being arranged to connect all corners of the city as well as places in the northern and southern fringes to the fair venue.
“These buses will have fixed fares and leave for selected destinations covering the city and its fringes so that book lovers don’t find it difficult to commute,” said a senior official of the transport department.
Guild officials said the last edition of the fair witnessed about 26 lakh visitors and book lovers and recorded sales worth Rs 25 crore.
The year before, about 22 lakh people had visited the fair and the volume of sales stood at close to Rs 23 crore.
“The two halls for English publications will be named after Samares Mazumdar and A.S. Byatt, who breathed their last in 2023. The Children’s Pavilion will be
based on the characters of Pandab Goenda, in memory of Sashtipada Chattopadhyay,” said Sudhangshu Sekhar Dey, the guild’s general secretary.
The two open stages inside the fairground — Mukta Mancha — will be named after Nirendranath Chakraborty and Samaresh Basu, commemorating their birth centenary year.
Publishers from Germany will participate in the fair after a gap of 12 years, guild officials said.
The Kolkata Literature Festival will be held from January 26 to 28 at the fair venue. Eminent writers from India and abroad will take part in the festival.