No Readers in Peshawar, Saeed Bookstore Closed

No less than a major setback for the provincial capital Peshawar of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province to see the closure of the largest bookstore Saeed Book Bank! The bookstore is said to have been closed due to the lack of reading culture in Peshawar.

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The bookstore, the largest to provide many kinds of curricular and recreational as well as latest foreign titles, has been closed in Peshawar after four decades of bookselling service. It has been shifted to the federal capital Islamabad. The Express Tribune quoted the owner of the bookstore telling that the closure was underlain by the lack of readership in Peshawar.

However, at the core of closing the bookstore, it appears as a financial decision. Saeed Book titles used to be expensive and way beyond the reach of te average student or reader. Foreign titles, on quality paper, usually cost around 10 to 20 US dollars per book – something only the well-off class could afford to buy. With many second-hand book dealers, it was perhaps not possible to maintain steady bookselling business in a city where most of the students come from middle class families and are on a fixed budget.

The fact that readership is limited is of course an obvious factor, but that seems also true of major cities like Islamabad, particularly when you are dealing in English language books only. Most of Pakistani readers go for newspapers; a significant number of female readers for Urdu language digests and magazines. In Islamabad, however, there is a notable higher number of foreigners, mostly English speaking people, who make a good readership for booksellers. And the number of opulent families with an English-obsessed young generation is also much higher in the federal capital.

Nevertheless, Saeed Book Bank’s closure in Peshawar is a sign that reading English language books, especially when they cost much, does not work for the average person in Pakistan.