FORUM (Spotlight Weekly)

Books For Everyman

By RONALD NASH

Books are vital to personal development. They can start students on the lifelong path to learning. They can provide the latest, most accurate information and thinking to help build knowledge and lay the foundations for a successful career. They can provide updating to young professionals keen to stay ahead of the game. And they can provide pleasure. Books open up a world beyond our everyday lives. They can teach us, challenge us, amuse us, make us laugh or cry.

The British Council in Kathmandu has been providing access to books and information to Nepalese people from all walks of life for over 40 years. Last week saw a major event continuing in that long tradition.

The Everyman Millennium Library Project was set up in the United Kingdom with charitable funding two years ago. It sought to provide for a wider audience a unique collection of 250 outstanding examples of world literature from the classics to European works in translation, Commonwealth authors as well as mainstream English literature of all periods. The books have been presented not only to every high schools in Britain - itself a vast undertaking - but also to 77 countries overseas. This was an enormous contribution in the service of literature and education.

The British Council in Kathmandu was successful in securing 30 sets of these books for educational institutions in Nepal, at a total value of NR 9,900,000 - in UK terms, nearly a tenth of million pounds - a staggering sum. We officially presented the collections in a small ceremony at the new Council offices in Lainchaur last week.

Those receiving the library sets represented the majority of institutions in the country which are currently engaged in teaching English Literature at bachelor degree level and above. They went to colleges, schools and libraries from places as far afield as Chitwan, Jhapa, Kavre and Sunsari. In those various institutions the collections will make an invaluable addition to the resources available to staff and students alike. The books have been built for durability, being printed on special paper and stitched not glued so they should last for generations.

As I was leaving for the British Council ceremony I looked on my own bookshelves to see which of the editions from the set I myself owned. My eye lighted on a Russian novel. In the first line of his book Anna Karenina, Tolstoy tells us: "Every happy family is alike: but an unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

What a tantalizing invitation to get interested in a story. Is it true? Is he talking about us? Or is it somebody else? The paragraph which follows details the trials of the Oblousky family with rebellious servants, absentee parents and wayward children, setting the framework for the irresistible and tragic story which follows.

Anna Karenina is just one of the world classics which the British Council gifted last week. I hope young people and students from all those thirty institutions will be able to enjoy the books they have been given, and gain entry into all those other worlds the books represent, for very many years to come.

(The author is British Ambassador to Nepal)