Indian fans pay tributes to Ayn Rand with book

New Delhi, Aug 17 (UNI) 'Ayn Rand at 100', a book on the highly acclaimed yet most debated works of Ayn Rand, was released here to mark the birth centenary of the iconic author whose ideas on intellectual freedom and morality of free market influenced a generation of people around the world.

The book release was a part of a three-day event held in Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai. The book, containing essays by scholars from all over the world about Rand's ideas and philosophy of ''man's own happiness as the moral purpose of his life'', is edited by Prof Tibor Machan, the R C Hollies Professor of Business Ethics at Chapman University, California.

Prof Machan was himself a student of Rand's in the 1960s.

Hosted by the Liberty Institute in partnership with the Friedrich Maumann Foundation, the book was released last evening by Sushma Berlia, president of PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

''Trying to make others happy at one's expense can never bring happiness to anyone. So the primary thing for man is to find his own happiness in life, so that he can make others happy,'' said Berlia talking about one of Rand's books 'Virtue of Selfishness'.

An entrepreneur, Berlia said she felt deeply touched by Rand's works.

Rand's work were more in tune with the practical dimension of life and it made ''the world more sensible'', Barun Mitra of the Liberty Institute said.

Rand (1905-1982) wrote many books and her 'Atlas Shrugged' and 'Fountainhead' achieved immense popularity among the youth, selling about one million copies worldwide.

Rand's first literary work was her autobiography 'We the Living', which talked about the lives of the people, including herself, in Russia. The book was written during the World War II, when Russians were trying to escape from Leningrad.

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