Vijitha Yapa elected Chairman of Afro Asian Book Council

Saturday, 1 March 2014 06:24 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Vijitha Yapa was elected Chairman of the Afro Asian Book Council last week at the AGM of the organisation held in New Delhi during the World Book Fair 2014. He is the first Sri Lankan to hold this post. Yapa is currently the President of the Sri Lanka Book Publishers’ Association and Vice President of the Asia Pacific Publishers

Association. Addressing the members of the Afro Asian Book Council, he thanked them for the confidence they had in him and said the first priority is to get books published in Asia to bookshops in Africa and for books published in Africa to be sold in Asian markets. He added that while there are many disputes with regard to the administration during colonial rule by the British, the common language of English must be used as a bridge. He said that in Sri Lanka this year the winning entry for the ‘Swarna Pusthaka’ award for the best novel published in Sinhala will be translated into English so that it will be available throughout the world. He said that digital e-books through organisations like Amazon have opened many possibilities of making available good literature to a much wider audience of readers at a reasonable cost. The Afro Asian Book Council was established 24 years ago with the main objective of achieving intellectual self-reliance through mutual assistance and cooperation between Africa and Asia in authorship and publishing. The activities in Asia and Africa have included participating in Book exhibitions and author development workshops at national and international levels, book industry training programmes, seminars, consultations and annual conferences on book-related themes in Asia and Africa. In addition the council facilitates the flow of books and Rights with a view to promoting indigenous authorship and publishing.