Walking BookFairs

📣 Announcing the June BOTM—Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated by Lin King.

Winner of the International Booker Prize 2026, Taiwan Travelogue is a bittersweet story of love between two women, nested in an artful exploration of language, history and power.

May 1938. The young novelist Aoyama Chizuko has sailed from her home in Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. She’s been invited there by the Japanese government ruling the island, though she has no interest in their official banquets or imperialist agenda. Instead, Chizuko longs to experience real island life and to taste as much of its authentic cuisine as her famously monstrous appetite can bear.

Soon a Taiwanese woman – who is younger even than she is, and who shares the characters of her name – is hired as her interpreter and makes her dreams come true. The charming, erudite, meticulous Chizuru arranges Chizuko’s travels all over the Land of the South and also proves to be an exceptional cook.

Over scenic train rides and braised pork rice, lively banter and winter melon tea, Chizuko grows infatuated with her companion and intent on drawing her closer. But something causes Chizuru to keep her distance. It’s only after a heartbreaking separation that Chizuko begins to grasp what the ‘something’ is.

Disguised as a translation of a rediscovered text by a Japanese writer, this novel was a sensation on its first publication in Taiwanese Mandarin in 2020 and won Taiwan’s highest literary honour, the Golden Tripod Award. Taiwan Travelogue unearths lost colonial histories and deftly reveals how power dynamics inflect our most intimate relationships.

Get your copy on a special offer (₹400 for book club) at Walking BookFairs today, register your name and join us at the June Book Club meet.

June Meet Up
🗓️28 June | Sunday
🕰️4 PM
📍Walking BookFairs Bhubaneswar
📲Register Now To Attend (DM/WhatsApp/In Store)

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Marjane Satrapi 💔

Can’t believe you are gone.

Marjane Satrapi was a French-Iranian artist, graphic-novelist and film-maker known to the world as the creator of Persepolis.

In 2000 she published Persepolis, a comic book memoir that became an international publishing phenomenon. It told the story of a rebellious and outspoken young girl navigating the upheaval in Iran after the shah is overthrown in 1979 and the establishment of the Islamic Republic. The story follows the protagonist’s attempts to understand the country’s violence and ideological control before she is sent alone to Europe at the age of 14. Satrapi later co-directed the animated film adaptation of Persepolis, which became an international hit and earned her a place in Oscar history as the first woman nominated for the Academy award for best animated feature. The memoir sold millions of copies, established Satrapi as one of the most widely read Iranian authors in the world, and its success challenged many western assumptions about Iranian society and culture.

After leaving comics for years, in 2024, she returned to the medium, coordinating Woman, Life, Freedom, a collaborative graphic work bringing together 17 Iranian and international comic artists alongside academics and researchers. The book examined the protest movement that emerged after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman detained in 2022 for allegedly failing to comply with Iran’s mandatory headscarf rules.

Throughout her life, Satrapi was a strong and powerful voice committed to opposing dictatorship in Iran and a champion of democracy, social justice and women’s rights everywhere in the world.

Your life and work will continue to inspire, rest in love and resistance 🤍

Source: The Guardian

[Marjane Satrapi, Writer, Persepolis, Iran, Graphic Novel, Filmmaker, Artist, Feminist, Social Justice, Inspiration, Rest In Peace]

Farewell J.P Das, teacher, poet, playwright, translator, painter, actor, novelist, art historian and a brilliant human being.

Your words and art shall live on 🤍

[RIP Jagannath Prasad Das, J.P. Das, Indian Writers, Odia Writers, Indian Literature, Odia Literature, Odisha, Books, Bookstore]

This June, we are delighted to bring you a beginner-friendly interactive photography workshop with photographer at Walking BookFairs ✨

This workshop has a focus on understanding photography as an art form and its personal connection to each of us. Rather than concentrating on the technical aspects of cameras, the workshop explores photography as a medium of observation, storytelling, and self-expression.

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Topics to be covered:
• Storytelling through images
• Understanding light and composition
• Observation and visual thinking
• Building confidence with any camera or mobile phone
• Finding and expressing one’s unique perspective through photography

The session is designed for beginners and anyone interested in seeing and documenting the world more thoughtfully through images.

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Ranvir Deb is a Bhubaneswar-based photographer focused on documentary, street, and cultural storytelling with over 15+ years of experience in the field. His work explores everyday life, traditions, festivals, and human moments across Odisha and beyond through visual narratives.

🗓️ 21 June | Sunday
🕰️ 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM
📍Walking BookFairs (Bhubaneswar)
🎟️15 Seats Only | Fee: ₹499
📲WhatsApp on 7381474505 to register now!

[Photography Workshop, Photography, Photographers, Beginner Friendly, Workshop, Bhubaneswar, Join Us, June Events, Bhubaneswar Events, Bookstore, Community Space, Walking BookFairs]

The most fun and fabulous book community in town 📖✨

May Book Club is happening on 31 May, 4-5 PM at two locations—Walking BookFairs (Bhubaneswar and Cuttack) bookstores. Don’t miss it for the world. Reserve your spot now (DM/WhatsApp/in store). Bring any book you loved reading (or buy one at the bookstore) and join the conversation 📖✨

[Books, Bookstore, Book Club, Book Club Meet, Monthly Meet, Offline Book Club, Book Community, Readers, Booklover, Bibliophile, Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Free Events, Community, Walking BookFairs]

After we posted Mieko Kawakami’s new book we were asked for more recommendations by Japanese writers, so here we are with three must-read Japanese writers that we absolutely love and know that you would too.

Drop by to get your copies or send us a DM to order. We do ship pan India.

Our bookstore is open 11 AM to 8 PM, Tuesday to Sunday.

Travel writing can be an education in how to travel, what to focus on when on the road, how to pay attention to the lives of others and connect details, stories, ideas. How to observe not just the world, but oneself in the world.

In this two-day workshop, the novelist and travel writer Chandrahas Choudhury will let you in on some of the secrets of the form. These include: how to bring your authentic personality or “voice” on to the page, how to make drafts of your experiences to write up later, how to study and write up details of differences between cultures, and how to discover your own unique gifts and resources in the travel-writing form (everyone has some).

Learn how to add writing to your travels in this one-of-a-kind exercise-rich workshop, and you’ll never travel the same way again.

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Chandrahas Choudhury is a novelist (Arzee the Dwarf, Clouds, Days of My China Dragon) and travel writer. Some of his travel work includes “In The Footsteps of Gandhi” (Conde Nast Traveller), about travelling around India by train a hundred years after Gandhi’s return to India from South Africa in 1915; “The Great Indian Mango Trail” (Wall Street Journal), about a 15-day, 10,000 km summer trek in search of mangoes not easily found in markets; “Mumbai By Night” (EnRoute Air Canada), a guide to wandering around the city from 6pm to 6am that won a gold in the 2018 North American Travel Journalists Association (NATJA) travel writing awards; and “Dance of the Gods” (The Ceylon Chronicle), an account of the music and dance of the Candomble religion in Brazil.

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Don’t miss out! 12 seats only! Register now on WhatsApp!

We paused, relaxed, connected, laughed, made some art and had a great lot of fun at this judgment free art healing workshop with no rules, guided by reader and artist Suvashis earlier this May at Walking BookFairs 🌸

Thank you for joining us, everyone. We, at Walking BookFairs host events around art, culture and literature at our bookstores throughout the year. All event updates are posted on this page, do follow to get updates. You can also DM us for more information and to sign up.

See you soon 🌸

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[Healing With Art, Art, Art Workshop, Paint, Sketch, Doodle, Brush, Hand Made, Readers, Books, Bookstore, Bhubaneswar, Third Space, Community, Events, Walking BookFairs]

“This is not the Japan you find in novels about cats, cafés and bookshops. Kawakami draws back this cosy façade to reveal the grimy reality underneath — and she does it with consummate style. With Sisters in Yellow, she proves she is still the most exciting Japanese novelist at work today”

We are super thrilled to have Mieko Kawakami’s newest book at our bookstore. A story of enduring friendship and deep betrayal, Sisters in Yellow is a masterpiece of teenage dreams and adult cruelties that confirms Mieko Kawakami as one of the great writers of her generation.

Mieko Kawakami is the author of the highly-acclaimed novels Breasts and Eggs, Heaven and All the Lovers in the Night. Born in Osaka, Japan, Kawakami made her literary debut as a poet in 2006, and in 2007 published her first novella, My Ego, My Teeth, and the World. Known for their poetic qualities, their insights into the female body, and their preoccupation with ethics and modern society, her books have been translated into over twenty languages. Her literary awards include the Akutagawa Prize, the Tanizaki Prize, and the Murasaki Shikibu Prize. She lives in Tokyo, Japan.

Get your copies at Walking BookFairs.

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