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Along with the launch of many books, this Book Fair will see the birth of a university press. Jadavpur University Press will be inaugurated on February 1 at the fair grounds.
The first two books to come out of the press will be Bengali translations of two redoubtable Italians. One is the translation of selections from the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci by Sukanta Chaudhuri, Professor Emeritus, Jadavpur University, the other of Machiavelli’s Il Principe (The Prince) by Doyeeta Majumder, titled Rajpurush. Both have been translated directly from the Italian.
These are the first two volumes of a series of which Chaudhuri is the general editor.
Renaissance expert Carlo Vecce from the Oriental University of Naples will be present at the launch.
The idea of the university press was mooted last year, said Professor Samir Saha, the director of the press, who teaches mechanical engineering at the university.
The press intends to bring out publications based on the research of scholars from JU and other institutions. The press will be the central unit to bring out all university publications, Saha said.
“We also intend to reissue titles from the backlist of departmental publications. There are quite a few out-of-print scholarly titles for which there is still a great demand,” said Abhijit Gupta, the joint director of the press.
Chaudhuri spoke about the tradition of translating Italian classics into Bengali. He mentioned the works of Ramdas Sen, the entire collection of whose works is at the National Library.
Recently, Shyamal Gangopadhyay had translated Inferno and Purgatorio from Divine Comedy.
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