In a first, Germany to be theme country at Kolkata book fair 2025

Get ready for the International Kolkata Book Fair, featuring Germany as the theme country, drawing over 25 lakh visitors.

West Bengal is set for its biggest festival after Durga Puja — the International Kolkata Book Fair, which draws over 25 lakh people — that is just a little over two months away. The event will be held from January 28 to February 9, and this will be the first time in its history that Germany will be the theme country.

“We would like to mention that the idea of organising the Kolkata Book Fair for the first time in 1976 came from Germany’s iconic Frankfurt Book Fair. Founder-members of the Publishers & Booksellers Guild (which organises the event in Kolkata) were regular visitors to that fair. At a later stage, representatives from the Frankfurt Book Fair also visited the Kolkata book fair. Also, in 1984 and in 2006, when India was the theme country of the Frankfurt fair, the guild had represented publishers and authors of eastern India,” guild president Tridib Chatterjee and general secretary Sudhangshu Sekhar Dey said in a joint statement on Friday (November 15, 2024).

Mr. Chatterjee later told The Hindu that Germany had pollution issues with the earlier venues of the fair — first the dusty Maidan and then another ground across Science City — and representatives from Germany had stopped participating after 2009. “This place [in Salt Lake City] is concreted so they came back in the last book fair,” he said.

“As you know, currently the International Kolkata Book Fair is the world’s largest attended non-trade book festival. Twenty-seven lakh book lovers visited the last book fair in 2024 and the book sales amounted to ₹23 crore. As happy as we are at this astounding success, we are also a bit worried. Many new publishers have applied to participate in the upcoming book fair, but as the size of the round remains the same, we deeply regret to inform that the number of stalls cannot be increased from that of the last year,” the guild officials said in their statement.

Also read: For little magazines of West Bengal, book fair is biggest event

In the 2024 fair the number of stalls were around 1,050, a number that will remain the same. “Like every year, Great Britain, USA, France, Italy, Spain, Peru, Argentina, Colombia, and other Latin American countries will participate. Besides, there will be publications from other States of India, such as Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Bihar, Assam, Jharkhand, Telangana, Kerala, and Odisha. As always, there will be a Little Magazine pavilion, and Children’s pavilion and also the Kolkata Literature Festival,” the guild office-bearers said.