Friday, January 14, 2022

Day 2 of the Hyderabad Book Fair

The next day at the Hyderabad Book Fair in the same stall where I had found a copy of The Mute’s Soliloquy’ by Pramoedya Ananta Toer I got one of the most pleasantest shocks of my life. I was speechless when I spotted the four titles of the Buru Quartet by Toer on the same shelf where I had found his memoir the previous day. I simply couldn’t believe I could get so lucky. I grabbed them off the shelf before anyone could lay their hands on the titles, did not bargain with the seller and paid him whatever he asked. Only after I dropped them in bag and walked out of the stall did I feel a kind of joy fill up my heart. Later at home I checked out each of the four titles that make up the Buru Quartet: This Earth of Mankind, Child of All Nations, Footsteps, and House of Glass. I am now wondering what to with the copy of Footsteps that I had found long time back. 

Next find on Day 2 of the HBF was a copy of ‘A Dandy in Aspic’ by Derek Marlowe. I remember having come across this title mentioned somewhere and thought it might be good so I bought it.

Sometime back I had found a copy of ‘The L Shaped Room’ by Lynne Reid Banks and after reading it decided to buy every book that Banks has written. I found a copy of ‘The L-Shaped Room’, soon afterwards and also a copy of ‘Two is Lonely’ by her a year later. The next find in HBF was a copy of ‘An End to Running’ by Lynne Reid Banks that I saw on top of a stack of books. I got this title pretty cheap at fifty rupees.

Another find, the last book of the day, was a nice copy of ‘Funny Boy’ by Shyam Selvadurai. I had read about this book somewhere but couldn’t find a decent copy all these days. So when I saw this copy I immediately pounced on it and bought it.

The prices were a bit high but I did not mind because the book fair comes only once a year and all the books I bought were pretty good titles that would have been difficult to find all at one place.

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