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Comment by yantrams | Hacker News Reader

I was lucky to get hold of 70 of these books in absolute mint condition (except for rusted stapler pins) last year after years of futile search in secondhand markets all across India. My dad, a book hoarder extraordinaire in his own right, managed to connect with a retired journalist who apparently stumbled upon them in Nepal and bought them at like less than a dollar a kilo or something!

For anyone interested in scanned files of these in Telugu, you can get them from my blog here http://linkdot.link/sooviytt-prcurnnlu-childrens-books.html#...

https://www.arvindguptatoys.com/ probably has the largest collection of many of these books in English and other Indian languages. There are tons of children’s books from other countries too.

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Holy smokes this is awesome! Kannada being my mother tongue I can read (more or less ;-)) Telugu! BTW do you have Stories from Russian History? I had its Kannada edition as a child; been searching for it for a while. The book title (in Kannada) is "Russian Itihasadinda Kathegalu".

Yes indeed! Amazing stories and illustrations. Have read this book end to end probably a dozen times as a kid :) The headings in this book had a Telugu font I'd never seen used anywhere else.

I assume you're talking about this one https://sovietbookbugs.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/rassian-c...

It is relatively easy to find if you search in the right places. Have seen copies of it floating around in many second hand shops. I'm pretty sure you can get this in Lenin Centre, Vijayawada. I can speak to my dad and see if he can help. You can ping me at xhreeha.replace.x.with.s@gmail.com

Yes! That's the one! Thanks so much :-).

> The headings in this book had a Telugu font I'd never seen used anywhere else.

Same for Kannada too and I too have read the book end-to-end a dozen or so times, even as an adult :-D.

I'll ping you! Thanks again!

Any chance you are from Mysore? I grew up in Mysore and these books were always on sale in the Town Hall building next to the city bus stand. I would go there with my mom and spend HOURS picking books while she did her other shopping.

Though I didn't grow up in Mysore I studied engineering there; I fondly recall those 4 years of my life. I didn't know about Town Hall book sale :-(. Fabulous city Mysore, it has managed to retain its original self despite all these years.

Those looking to buy Soviet era books in Mumbai, check out People's Book Store in Fort area (Google maps- https://goo.gl/maps/pJd7ve2g68D8AXsK7). Behind racks of Marx and Che Guevara are stashed quite some rare books.

I distinctly remember seeing the cover image book (Adventures of Denis). Visited sometime in late 2018.

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