PVLF 2026

Bhavan Bookfest 2025 Celebrates Bengali Literature and Culture in Delhi

Bhavan Bookfest 2025 at CR Park brought Bengali publishers, authors, and readers together with book launches, cultural events, and literary showcases.
on Sep 26, 2025

The Bhavan Bookfest 2025, a local book fair for Delhi's Bengali-speaking population, was held at Chittaranjan Bhavan in CR Park between 12 and 21 September. Held by CR Park's Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Memorial Society (DCMS), the book festival remained in town for ten days, with publishers, booksellers, authors, readers, and literary enthusiasts coming together, witnessing book launches, discussions, cultural programmes, and literary activities.

Some of the small and large publishers and bookstores of West Bengal joined hands, such as Patralekha, Banishilpa Publishers & Booksellers, Patra Bharati, Read Bengali Bookstore, Daksha Bharati, Bee Books, Subernarekha, Udbodhan, Hawakal, Anjali Prokashani, Ananda, Mahua, Woodpecker, Shishu Sahitya Samsad, Dey's Publishing, Khoai Publishing, and Dev Sahitya Kutir. English Publishers Rupa and Niyogi Books also featured.

Niyogi Books - salute to Bengali heritage

Niyogi Books boasted a carefully curated list for readers across all ages - enthralling fiction from its Olive Turtle imprint, provocative translations under its Thornbird imprint, interesting non-fiction from its Paper Missile imprint, and enriching Hindi titles under its Bahuvachan imprint. The publishing house's youngest and most youthful imprint, Perky Parrot, included a list of national and international children's literature. It included a list of coffee table books on Kolkata and the history of West Bengal.

Trisha De Niyogi, director and COO, Niyogi Books, who spoke at a book discussion on Books GenZ reads, said in an interview with Indian Printer & Publisher, "Specialty book fairs like Bhavan Bookfest serve the purpose of encouraging Bengal-themed books, both Bengali and English. Held at Chittaranjan Bhavan, where there is year-round cultural and literary activity, the fair is a natural culmination of that effort just before Durga Puja. Publishers find it to be the ideal platform to showcase a niche voice that has the ability to cut through the noise of the larger market. With its excellent timing and the persistent labors of the organizers, the Bookfest assists Bengal's history, culture, and literary heritage to discover new readers and devoted fans alike."

Prominent titles for the year include Harry Hobbs of Kolkata and Other Forgotten Lives by Devasis Chattopadhyay, A History Of Santiniketan Rabindranath Tagore And His Lifes Work 1861-1941 by Uma Das Gupta, Mujib's Blunders: The Power and the Plot Behind His Killing by Manash Ghosh, Contemporary Urdu Short Stories from Kolkata, edited by Shams Afif Siddiqi & Fuzail Asar Siddiqi, and translated by Shams Afif Siddiqi, and The Scratch and Sniff Chronicles by Hemangini Dutt Majumder, Niyogi said. A History of Santiniketan was only sold at the fest prior to the official release in October.

Read Bengali Bookstore - Making reading Bengali trendy

Read Bengali Bookstore from Kolkata, for which we had written previously, was a very conspicuous stall with a nice range of fiction and non-fiction books in Bengali and also items like coasters with characters from Satyajit Ray films, fridge magnets of Kolkata, notebooks and notepads of popular cartoon characters on their cover and T-shirts of hand-pulled rickshaw of Bengal, yellow cabs of Kolkata, tramcars and paintings of Goddess Durga.

Bhasa Classics, the parent company of Read Bengali Bookstore and an independent publisher, issues timeless classics ranging from Rabindranath Tagore to Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay. Two new books on Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and a comic on Sukumar Ray were released by Bhasa Classics at the Read Bengali Bookstore's booth at the Bhavan Bookfest - Netajir Secret Service (Netaji's Secret Service) by Pabitra Mohan Ray, Netaji O Sekaler Durgapuja (Netaji & Durga Puja of those days) by Soumobrota Dasgupta, and Ha ja ba ra la by Sukumar Ray, illustrated by Charbak Dipta

Pritam Sengupta of Read Bengali Bookstore mentioned they got an encouraging response on each day.

Nandy Enterprises - For English and Bengali books

Nandy Enterprises, distributor and publisher for some of the leading publishing companies like Rupa Publications, HarperCollins Publishers India, and Penguin Random House for North India, had a huge stall. Bestselling winning novels like The Golden Road by William Dalrymple, Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree and translated by Daisy Rockwell, and Heart Lamp: Selected Stories by Banu Mushtaq and translated by Deepa Bhasthi saw a lot of buyers. Arundhati Roy's memoir Mother Mary Comes to Me was also a top choice among fair attendees.

The stall had an extensive collection of Bengali and English books from its publishing division, Nandy Books. Its book Calcutta Then and Now by Rathin Mitra was published in both Bengali and English and evoked considerable interest among readers and book enthusiasts.

Debashis Nandy of Nandy Enterprises asserted, "Bengali books are doing well, far better than English books. We have made an effort to maintain a collection of different genres of books in order to attract readers of all ages and interests. Numerous new publishers based in Kolkata attended to promote their Bengali books in Delhi. The footfall was less this time. Nevertheless, most visitors were going home with a book or two."

Unmukta Uchchwas - trilingual literary magazine

CR Park-based Unmukta Uchchwas Literary Society advertised its 31-year-old trilingual biannual literary magazine, Unmukta Uchchwas.

"Unmukta Uchchwas is the first magazine in India being brought out in three languages -English, Bengali, and Hindi. Running three languages in a single magazine is not easy at all, but publishing such a magazine from Delhi is still more challenging because people are habituated to writing in English here. We have our writers write in Bengali, we talk to them regarding their articles, and ensure that we can get them translated into Bengali. We get Hindi contributions from time to time," Aditya Sen, editor of Unmukta Uchchwas, told Indian Printer & Publisher.

Publishing a magazine, and that being a trilingual one, is a huge task, Sen said, the reason no one has ever managed to publish, let alone maintain, such a magazine for more than three decades. "We have been wondering how long we can carry on this magazine." They have partnered with the publication as a trust with renowned economist-turned-poet Dr Bisweswar Bhattacharyya for its sustainability.

Unmukta Uchchwas is made available to bookshops in Delhi and Kolkata. The trust takes part in the Kolkata Book Fair and three book fairs in Delhi dedicated to Bengali literature - the four-day Dakshin Delhi Kalibari Boimela in November, the four-day Bengal Association's Delhi Boimela in March, and the Bhavan Bookfest.