The 58th Frankfurt Book Fair has brought together a record 7,272 exhibitor from more than 100 countries. It is spotlighting India this year as its guest country with a packed programme of readings and debates.

More than 70 authors from India have arrived in the German financial capital for a broad cultural showcase that also features concerts, dance recitals, films and live yoga demonstrations. Even the left-leaning national daily Tageszeitung got into the mood, printing its masthead Wednesday in Hindi.

Amitav Ghosh, the best-selling author of "The Glass Palace" and a professor of comparative literature at City University of New York, said Asian novelists often offered an international perspective that Western writers often could not, or did not.

"Every single well-known Indian writer has been steeped in European literature," he said. "When I talk to British or American writers I'm amazed how provincial they are. They only read British or American writers."

Mahasweta Devi, an 80-year-old grande dame of Indian literature, said the fair would have to struggle to capture the endless contradictions and breathtaking pace of change in her country.

"Culture is what will take us into the future yet keep us in close contact with our roots, our history, our tradition, our heritage," she said at the gala opening ceremony.

Zadie Smith, Donna Leon, Ken Follett and German Nobel laureate Guenter Grass -- fresh from a scandal over his late revelation that he served in the Nazis' Waffen SS force during World War II -- are among other writers holding forth in Frankfurt.

The boom in electronic publishing is also in focus this year, as well as concerns posed by Internet search engine Google's practice of posting scanned pages from books online. The practise has landed Goggle in hot water with publishers and authors.

A new system is set to be unveiled at the event that would allow publishing houses to safeguard their copyrights by attaching conditions to reproduce content found online.

And a literacy campaign is being launched in partnership with UNESCO to aid the 700 million adults worldwide who are unable to read.