Call for Direct Admission
At our university, education goes beyond the classroom. Join us in celebrating their efforts and let's continue to build a more compassionate world together!
At our university, education goes beyond the classroom. Join us in celebrating their efforts and let's continue to build a more compassionate world together!
General News
23 January 2026
🖊️Kathakali De Amid the soft winter ambiance, when the readers drift into the pages of the literary chronicles around the expensive avenues of the International Kolkata Book Fair 2026, one presence carries a quiet gravity. Ukraine has entered the national pavilions with books in hand rather than banners of victory for the very first time, moreover in an era when war still looms over the country. The participation symbolises more than literary diversity. It embodies resilience and the will to present their literary culture even amidst difficult times. One of the most remarkable literature that they have represented is a compilation of an eminent poet, Taras Shevchenko, compiled by another celebrated poet Mridula Ghosh. In Ukraine, Mridula Ghosh is considered to be equivalent to the legendary nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. The debut of Ukraine is not merely a formal occasion. It originates from a country whose cities have heard sirens more often than silence, whose libraries have stood beside shelters, and whose writers have perfected the craft of writing between disturbances. But rather than being a nation of war, Ukraine arrives here hundreds of kilometers from the front lines as a nation of words. The stall by Ukraine is adorned with classics for children, chronicles revolving around Indian classical music, revolutionary roads and many more that are deeply connected to their roots. A significant literature that the stall boasts of is the repertoire of astounding actions of former president Viktor Yanukovych. This arrival has a purposeful modesty to it. It is not announced by any spectacle. Rather, a tiny pavilion offers its shelves to poetry, history, children's books, and translations—the commonplace, timeless tools of civilization. Its potency is found in that constraint. Ukraine's involvement serves as a reminder to tourists that literature does not wait for peace to start; it continues to speak even in the absence of it. IKBF has always been a geographically diverse literary space .This year, Ukraine adds a new layer to that map, one that is more resilient than diplomatic. Its existence is a human declaration in the language of pages rather than a political one in the language of slogans. Here, the visitor hears voices of survival, memory, and imagination rather than war-related headlines. On asking about their experience of participation in a literary symphony for the first time amidst war time in their country they expressed gratitude towards people of Bengal, the publishers and the visitors. They further stated their anticipated participation in the 50th IKBF and make it a further tradition to be present in this textual landscape. A message as timeless as print itself is conveyed by Ukraine's subtle literary debut on the global stage: stories endure wars and the human spirit, like literature, refuses to be silenced in a time when disputes dominate discourse and conflicts shatter empathy.
Ukraine's involvement seems particularly appropriate for Kolkata, a city whose own literary history is rich with resistance, revival, and change. Long a gathering place of continents and consciences, the fair turns into a tiny moral commons where people from all over the world congregate to read rather than debate.