The Hyderabad Book Fair Haul- Day 4

When the Hyderabad Book Fair begins in Hyderabad excitement builds up in my life. I cannot help thinking about the books in the stalls all the time. The excitement is so intense that I tell myself that I would just visit the stalls and only look at the books. But I end up buying all those titles I happen to spot. On the fourth day’s visit to the Hyderabad Book Fair I ended up buying three more wonderful titles adding to the dozen or more titles that I had already bought in the previous visits.

In a second hand book stall by a Hyderabad based seller I happened to look closely at each and every title though I had already gone through the stall a couple of times before. I spotted ‘Matchbox; Stories’ by Ashapurna Debi, an almost new book that I immediately grabbed it. There were too many people poking around in the rows of books laid out on the table and grabbing is the only way you can prevent a book from being snapped up by someone else. I have read about Ashapurna Debi and had not expected to find her stories in English. There are twenty one stories in it translated into English from the original Bengali by Prasenjit Gupta. There’s also a lengthy introduction (33 pages long!) by Jhumpa Lahiri that turned out to be an extract from her thesis on Ashapurna Debi. I got the book for only fifty rupees.

The next find was in the same stall. I spotted a nice copy of ‘All About H. Hatterr’ by GV Dessani. I already have three copies of this title but I couldn’t resist picking up another copy because I am not able to put into words how wonderful and unique this book is. This book is a real rare treasure and I am truly lucky to find my fourth copy.

I had seen copies of ‘The Wandering Falcon’ by Jamil Ahmed in the earlier book fairs too and elsewhere also. Though I wanted to read this book the price prevented me from buying it. I was excited to find another good copy in a book stall of a Mumbai based seller. I thought he'd ask for two hundred rupees or more. But I was lucky this time as the seller said I could have the hardcover book for just a hundred rupees. I took it and am now planning to begin it right away.