Students flip through books at a stall at National Book Fair on Friday. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, Nov. 11: Book lovers visiting National Book Fair have to wait longer to lay their hands upon Walter Isaacson’s biography of Apple Inc Co founder Steve Jobs, as none of the 200 stalls spread across 70,000sqft has its copies.

The book on Jobs, who recently died of cancer, has jumped to the bestsellers list across the globe, but ironically, stalls at the fair had no copies of the book.

Ratneshwar, an organiser of the book fair, said: “We don’t know whether any publisher had copies of the Steve Jobs biography.” However, he said the real picture would emerge only after the book fair picks up in the coming days.

Chief minister Nitish Kumar today formally inaugurated the book fair through video conferencing from Bettiah. The fair will remain open from 11am to 8pm and offers free entry.

Majority of the stalls The Telegraph visited at the book fair had no copies of the Jobs biography. An official at Prabhat Prakashan said: “This year, we have mainly stocked up on books of Indian authors in Hindi.” Majority of the stalls put up at the book fair are selling titles of Indian authors printed by Indian publishers.

Last year, the book, Vikshit Bihar Ki Khoj, penned by chief minister Nitish Kumar and containing select speeches and discussions from the floor of the Assembly, registered brisk sales. Taking inspiration from the chief minister, some of his cabinet colleagues and the chief minister’s fellow politicians have penned books, which are available at the fair.

Gandhi Darshan Ke Panch Sutra, a book penned by industries and disaster management minister Renu Kushwaha, is available at the Prabhat Prakashan stall. Veteran journalist Kuldeep Nayar will formally inaugurate the fair on November 16. The book deals with socio-economic problems in the country as a whole and Bihar, in particular. The book tries to find out the solution to deal with unemployment, poverty, and extremism with Gandhian principle.

Similarly, N.K. Singh, the JD(U) Rajya Sabha MP and a close associate of Nitish Kumar, too had written a book, Vivek Ki Seema, which deals with the country’s current political scene. A book comprising unpublished poems on JP written by literary figures of his time is available at the fair. The book, which contains unpublished poems on JP by Janaki Vallabh Shastri, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar and Dharamvir Bharti, has been compiled by Uma Shankar Verma and JD(U) MP Shivanand Tiwari has written its preface.

For art and film lovers, a biography on tragedy king Dilip Kumar, Ahnama-E-Mohabbat, written by Saeed Ahmad, is on offer besides another on Amrish Puri alias Mogambo titled Jeevan Ka Rangmanch.

An official of Vani Prakashan said: “This year, we have many books dealing with social-economic problems. We expect that people will love the travelogue, Mohenjodaro, which deals with the Harappan civilisation.” The new edition of Taslima Nasreen’s Lajja has also hit the stalls besides her latest offering, Revenge.