Stalls in modern designs with organic materials, installed by different publishing houses and organisations at the ongoing Amar Ekushey Book Fair to display books have attracted the visitors’ attention.
The Bangla Academy is holding the month-long book fair at the academy premises and at Suhrawardy Udyan in the capital Dhaka. Monday was the 10th day of the book fair.
This year stall designs have become diverse with unique ideas and their implementations while the Academy prefers using environment-friendly elements at the fair venues.
The stalls have been designed and prepared by the country’s prominent artists and architects, which have attracted and engaged visitors of different age groups.
Most of the stalls use board, wood and plastic-based prints but some emerging and prominent publishing houses created ‘unique’ looks for attracting visitors.
This year 1,059 units have been allotted to 693 publishing houses and organisations while 34 pavilions have also been allocated.
Anyaprokash decorated their pavilion with artistic portrayal of the Language Movement in 1952. Created with black tins and barbed wire, the billboard depicted the history of language movements.
Prokriti-Porichoy, a publishing house for children’s books, decorated their stalls with floral motifs. There are drawing of nature specially trees on the walls, billboard and other space of the stall as per their theme.
The Quantum Foundation has made its stall with tree branches, wood and jute sacks, which looks artistic and eco-friendly too.
The stall of Biswa Sahitya Kendra has been designed as a red double decker bus while the pavilion of Afsar Brothers as traditional Patatan Ghar of Munshiganj.
The pavilion of Akash was designed with bamboos and wood while the stall titled Creative Dhaka Publications used tin and board.
Jagotik Prokashon drew the replica of Maqbool Fida Husain paintings on its stall while Kureghor decorated its stall with traditional Rickshaw paintings.
A total of 84 new titles hit the fair on Monday, raising the total number of books published at the fair to 692, according to academy officials.
Out of Monday’s 84 titles, 21 were collections of poems and 18 were novels while six were collections of short stories.
A commemorative discussion on life and works of writer Shahed Ali will be held at the Bangla Academy premises on Tuesday.
