The publishing house Rajpal and Sons seated in New Delhi, India, has released the Hindi edition Jerusalem Se Kasmir Tak of Jozef Banas´ novel Code 1. The publishing house, established in 1912, is one of the largest and eldest in India. It publishes prominent domestic and foreign authors such as Jiddu Krishnamurti, the most significant spiritual teacher of 20th-century India, Ruskin Bond, Jaswant Singh, Dalai Lama, Benazir Bhutto, Abdul Kalam, the President of India, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the Splading Professor of Eastern Religion and Ethics at University of Oxford, Amritlal Nagar, Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, laureates of the Nobel Prize Amartya Sen, Patrick Modiano and more. Every year the publishing house releases one thousand six hundred titles.
Banas´ novel was launched at a festive event by the Ambassador of the Slovak Republic, Žigmund Bertók, and the owner and general director of the publishing house, Meera Johri, who said it was an exceptional event, as Rajpal and Sons was releasing a Slovak author for the first time. Jozef Banas had caught her attention also due to his ethical principles, his writer´s credo being: “Writing helps me be a better person than I was yesterday.”
The novel about the possible life of Jesus Christ in India has the potential of becoming a blockbuster in India as well as all other countries where Indians speaking Hindi or Urdu live. This book market spans from India, where Rajpal and Sons distributes in one thousand and two hundred book stores, through South Africa, the USA, Great Britain, Australia, Fiji, Zimbabwe, Arabic countries, Pakistan and many more. The translator Amrit Mehta rejoices in the success of the Slovak author and expresses his hopes, that following the novel Code 1, he will have the opportunity to translate the novels Code 9 and Code 7 for this large market.
During his two-week tour in India, Jozef was presenting his book at the Indraprastha College For Women in New Delhi, where he was introduced to students and academics by the Principal Dr. Babli Moitra Saraf. Jozef visited the capital city of the state Rajasthan, Jaipur, where he met journalists in the multi arts centre Jawahar Kala Kendra. For two days, he stayed at the only women´s university in India in the town of Banasthali, accompanied by the Professor Hamsavahini Singh and received by the rector of the University Professor Aditya Shastri. He talked with participants and handed out awards to the winners of the University´s literary competition. The satisfied author said: “My tour in India was organized in a very professional way. Being one of Rajpal and Sons´ authors is a dream-come-true. I was pleasantly surprised by the good quality questions about my books, as well as the situation in Europe.”
With his seventeenth world edition Jozef holds the first place as the most translated Slovak author.
