LAHORE: A massive touring book fair which calls itself the world’s largest, opened its doors in Lahore’s Expo Center on Friday with a million books on sale and will continue around the clock for 11 days.

The Big Bad Wolf (BBW) book sale is a Malaysian-based book fair that began in 2009 and primarily sells excess or remaindered books on wide-ranging genres from international distributors at reduced prices. The fair toured the UAE, Philippines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka before coming to Pakistan this year.

“People are away from books for two reasons,” Nicholas Ng, head of corporate strategy at BBW books, told Arab News. “The cost of the book and range of books. We have brought one million books under one roof on almost every topic.”

The event was inaugurated by Punjab’s minister for Higher Education and Tourism, Raja Yasir Humayun, alongside BBW books founder Andrew Yap, and organizer Awais Akhtar Butt.

Butt told Arab News that the point of bringing the mega book sale to Pakistan was to “provide Pakistanis with affordable access to quality English books.”

But despite the massive range of non-fiction and fiction, with genres like graphic novels and science fiction also represented, some visitors say that the books are not suited to Pakistan’s reading habits, especially since school text-books are not available as is often the case in local book fairs.

“The books on sale are not relevant with subjects needed in Pakistan... like architecture," said Niaz Ahmad Khokhar, a visitor. “Books needed for Pakistani students are missing.”

The fair has a huge selection of children’s reading and activity books, and BBW books founder Andrew Yap said at the fair’s inauguration that the company will be bringing in augmented reality books for children as well.

“The book sale is a refreshing change from most book fairs held at the expo center,” said Saher Sohail, an associate professor of art history at the National College of Arts in Lahore who visited the fair on Saturday afternoon.

“Usually it’s just different publishing houses who have set up their own stalls, so this scale, variety and price is really great in comparison to that,” she said.