Books are a Passport to the World. That quotation was taken from a UNESCO Poster. Yes, books are a passport to the world! You can travel within the entire world of ours. Or else you can travel to the outer space! Or even else in the Alice’s Wonderland. Sometimes in the Harry Potter’s World of illusions! Or you can go a thousand leagues into the Earth itself. So there are no barriers. No need for travel documents.
So how does it happen? It all begins at home! This is how Lev Grossman (author, book critic for Time Magazine) described it: “My parents were both academics, incredibly austere literary figures. My father was a Poet and Professor of English at Brade. My mother was a Professor at Smith and Brandie's. They taught literature at fancy universities, and literature was a big deal in our house!
Literati
In ‘The Books that changed my life’ by Bethanne Patrick you can meet Charles Dickens from England, Pushkin or Gogol from Russia Victor Hugo or Guy de Maupassant from France, Tagore or R.K. Narayan from India, Paulo Coelho or Gabriel Garcia Marquez from Latin America - or even Chinua Achebe or Vole Soyinka from Africa - last but the least Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy or Martin Wickramasinghe from Sri Lanka! Or Huslun from China. All from the World of Books!
Moreover, some of these schools offered added attraction of instruction in English, according to The Language of Government (Educational Policies and Progress (1796-1948) by Prof J E Jayasuriya, 1977).
With the advent of the British Rule in Ceylon, the English Language became more or less a socio-cultural phenomenon. With Gutenberg’s Printing Machine, the English Language Book Publishing Industry day by day flourished into a media of dissemination of the modern knowledge and the world of literature - to the entire world.
In the British colonies, English became a National Language in official matters.
Book importers
So through this process, till today the English Book Trade plays a prominent role in the Sri Lankan readership. It’s appropriate to have a Book Bang of the English Book Trade by a leading firm of English Book Importers in Sri Lanka, the Sarasavi Bookshop Chain. It has been held since June 1 at the Colombo Public Library.
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