International Book Festival to be inaugurated today by Kerala Chief Minister 

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The seven-day-long International Book Festival being organised to mark the centenary celebration of the Kerala Legislative Library will be held from January 9 to 15. The week-long festival is being celebrated as the festival of letters which will be open to the public free of cost from 9 am to 9 pm. 

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan will inaugurate the book festival on Monday at Sankaranarayanan Thampi Members Lounge at 11:30 am. In solidarity with the State Government’s campaign against substance abuse, the International Book Festival’s message is ‘reading is intoxication’. Noted writer T Padmanabhan will be felicitated at the programme. LDF and UDF leaders including Thiruvananthapuram Corporation Mayor Arya Rajendran will be attending the various programmes. 

Legislative Assembly Speaker A N Shamseer informed that the library had its humble beginning as the Dewan’s Office Library of the erstwhile Travancore  State. 

“Renamed as the Legislative Library in 1921, it kept pace with the socio-political transformations of Travancore into Travancore Cochin and developed into the Travancore Cochin Assembly Library in 1949. Later it evolved into Kerala Legislative Library with the formation of the State in 1956”, said Shamseer.

The week-long festival will see various book releases, debates with the writers, panel discussions and vision talks happening.