The Frankfurt Book Fair is the world's largest trade fair for books held annually in October in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Representatives from book publishing and multimedia companies from all over the world come to the Frankfurt Book Fair in order to negotiate international publishing rights and licensing fees.

The fair is organized by a subsidiary company of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association and takes place every October. This year , around 287,000 visitors from all over the world came to view the collections shown by 7,225 exhibitors and 70 national and collective exhibitors from 101 countries, featuring more than 380,000 titles alongside book-related products and services. The Frankfurt Book Fair is a critical marketing event for the launching of books, but it is also an important event to facilitate the negotiation of the international sale of rights and licenses. Visitors take the opportunity to obtain information about the publishing market, to network, and to do business.

Publishers, agents, booksellers, librarians, academics, illustrators, service providers, film producers, translators, printers, professional and trade associations, institutions, artists, authors, antiquarians, software and multimedia suppliers all take part in the events and business climate of Frankfurt Book Fair

First country to make a second appearance (first was 1986, the last time the Frankfurt Book Fair organized the annual Guest appearance; since then the guest has contributed to the cost). Caused by a growing Indian book industry and also increasing numbers of German book-licenses to India. Furthermore, lots of much work has come to India since the abolition of a law that limited investments - mostly organization of science publishing STM, which is growing Online. All science publishers let work there. India provides worldwide third range of markets for publications in English; 12.000 publishers; 90.000 new publications annually in over 18 languages, sinking illiteracy. The book fair started a new annual conference with other events on analphabetism.

The National Book Trust India had sponsored this second guest appearance and translations. Many authors had readings in different Indian languages (there was also an exposition on these). Yoga, for example as a part of health-policy, was a too small part of the guest appearance to probably calm down the football fever (in Germany over 500 books on football new alone in spring before).

Peter Weidhaas, for a very long time (former) director of the Frankfurt Bookfair, presented an anecdote on the first beginning of collaboration between the Indian and German book industries in one of the forums on a jubilee of the Book Trust: Germany was still divided and the socialist stand on the Indian Book fair had large geographical book, "the biggest of the world". The press was covering only that. So the west German government/diplomacy was astonished; their director remembered that he always takes the world's smallest book in his jacket pocket: a millimeter-bible from the Gutenberg-Museum. So putting that out was attractive enough for the press. "The book fair is show-business", he said at Frankfurt on the occasion of the guests.

Three Blindmen describe the Elephant: Anthology from Kerala

The official presentation of the book took place on the 6th of October at the premises of the Book Fair in Fankfurt in the presence of the two stalwarts among Malayalam writers: Paul Zacharia and K. Satchidanandan. Most of the stories and poems in the volume are direct translations from Malayalam into German. A few are translated from English by translators who are closely linked to Kerala, its language and culture. The translators are Annakutty, Thomas Chakkiath, Christina Kamp, Bernd Kolossa , Asok and Jos Punnamparambil . The anthology is the first of its kind to appear in German from any of the South Indian languages so far.

The book has 208 pages with translations of 16 short stories (including Paul Zacharia's short novel "Praise the Lord") and 9 poems, the title story being "Three Blindmen describe the elephant" by E. Santhoshkumar. K. Satchidanandan, the former general secretary of the Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, has written an introduction for the book. The volume is a vintage of chosen works mostly by giants in their own genre like M.T. Vasudevan Nair, Sethu, Kamla Das, O.N.V. Kurup, Paul Zacharia, N.S. Madhavan, Ashita, Ayyappa Panickar, K.Satchidanandan , Edward Nazareth etc. The new generation writers like E. Santhoshkumar, Arshath Batheri, Anitha Thampi und T.P. Rajeevan are also represented. The anthology is edited by Mrs Christina Kamp (German translator, long-time Kerala fan and friend of Malayalam language and culture) and Jose Punnamparambil (Indian journalist from Kerala settled in Germany since 1966) and has been published by Horlemann Verlag, a German publisher specialised in books on South- and South-East Asia.

Althogh German missionaries like Hanxleden (Arnos Padri) and Dr. Hermann Gundert have contributed substantially to strengthening and developing Malayalam as a literary language, the great works and authors of the Malayalam language remain an unknown quantity for most of the German readers even today. "With the present anthology, and with a volume of Satchidanandan's poetry, big strides have been made to bring German readers closer to the vibrancy and dynamism of current Malayalam literature," says Editor Jose Punnamparambil.