Book lovers and avid readers in large numbers are attending the 12-day long book fair in Guwahati, Assam, where more than 70 publishers from across the country have set up their stalls.
The 15th edition of North East Book Fair in the city's Chandmari locality started on December 25 and is on till January 5.
The event's organiser and secretary of All Assam Publishers and Book-Sellers Association, Dhiraj Goswami, seemed pleased with the response so far.
"We have a good crowd here. We did a book fair in November also. This is our fifteenth year. We are getting very good response and we have lot of visitors here. Publishers from Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Madras (now Chennai) have visited the book fair," said Goswami.
Around 150 publishers and booksellers from across the globe are participating in the fair, which has been dedicated to late academicians Kamaleswar Bora, former vice-chancellor of Dibrugarh University in Assam, and Deba Prasad Baruah, former vice-chancellor of Guwahati University.
A representative at the fair said they have been able to attract more readers because books hold their own relevance.
"Today's generation is more focused towards education and books of different languages are good for them. We also need to have the knowledge of books which are in different languages," said the representative of Spandan Publishing House, Nandita Das.
A large number of people are visiting the book fair as books are also being translated in Assamese language to make it easy to understand for the people in the state.
In India's northeast, only Assam and Tripura are the states with a good number of publishers, whereas states like Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Mizoram are yet to build a good publishing strength.
The North East Book Fair 2013 also gives a hope for revival of books belonging to microscopic community and their literature.
The participants from Tripura also came up with few books in Kokborok, the principal language of Tripura, for interested people and scholars.
Various publishing houses from across the state released their books at the fair and schools and colleges also performed cultural programmes, besides holding discussions on various topics.
