With literary heavyweights like Canadian poet and novelist Margaret Atwood, author Ruskin Bond, US photographer Steve McCurry, Harvard historian Niall Ferguson and Stephen Fry from Britain, the famed Jaipur Literature Festival begins today.
The annual five-day jamboree, one of the largest free literary festivals in the world, which has lined up over 222 participants has been held at the 17th century Diggi Palace ever since its inception in 2006.
Last year a session by the former President A P J Abdul Kalam attracted the largest crowds and festival organisers had to close entry to the venue.
Writer and historian William Dalrymple, who is a co-director of the Festival along with Namita Gokhale, said he hopes to see “more coverage on literature this year”.
“I hope literature gets more coverage this year than the cooked up controversies,” he said.
From an impressive line up of speakers, Dalrymple said he looks forward to sessions by the big poster authors including Margaret Atwood, who would deliver this year’s keynote address besides Thomas Piketty, Stephen Fry, David Grossman and Niall Ferguson.
“I’m looking forward to the dust up between Shashi Tharoor and Niall Ferguson on the Empire and Anthony Sattin’s session on Young Lawrence. Of the more offbeat things, I look to hearing Cyprian Broodbank, the archaeology professor from Cambridge talking about Neanderthals, Irving Finkel talk about the Noah’s Arc,” the ‘White Mughals’ author told .
The Jaipur festival itself will be hosting two Caribbean writers — Kei Miller, who won the Forward prize for poetry and Booker prize winner Marlon James.
Apart from Caribbean literature, JLF also promises a great deal of history and partition literature, which according to Dalrymple is a reflection of what is being published the most.
“The greatest authors in the world, most come and some don’t. That’s up to them and I respect it. Some authors hate literature festivals, there is no diktat that you must appear in Jaipur”.
“We have the greatest authors in the world; the greatest minds of the world from Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, Yale, the Booker winners, the Sahitya Akademi winners, the Nobel winners.With literary heavyweights like Canadian poet and novelist Margaret Atwood, author Ruskin Bond, US photographer Steve McCurry, Harvard historian Niall Ferguson and Stephen Fry from Britain.
Amongst prominent Indian authors are Anuja Chauhan, former Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid, Alka Saraogi, Ashok Vajpeyi, Harish Trivedi, Urvashi Butalia, Jerry Pinto, Anjum Hasan, Ila Arab Mehta and Madhav Hada.
A total of 18 new titles are set to be launched during the festival such as Kanishk Tharoor’s ‘Swimmer among the Stars’, ‘The Ballad of Bant Singh’ and ‘The Tears of the Rajah’ by Ferdinant Mount.
Bollywood too shall have a fair share of representation at the literary gathering, with director-producer Karan Johar revealing snippets of his life, while discussing his biography ‘An Unsuitable Boy’.
BJP MP Shatrughan Sinha will be seen in a talk about his biography, ‘Anything But Khamosh: The Shatrughan Sinha Biography’ on January 25.
Kanhaiya Lal Sethia Award for Poetry, Shri Dwarka Prasad Agarwal Award For Upcoming Hindi Writer and Oxford Bookstore Book Cover Prize are some of the awards to be given out during the course of the festival.
‘Piya Behrupiya’, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night will be performed at The Albert Museum on January 22 at celebration of the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare.
Noted actor-playwright Girish Karnad will read his works during ‘Time and the Indian Imagination’ at Amber Fort, on January 23 followed by Sufi music by Mir Mukhtiyar Ali.
“We are delighted to bring some of the best music, theatre and poetry and showcase these against the backdrop of over a 1000 years of Indian architecture and heritage in Rajasthan,” Sanjoy Roy, Festival Producer said.
@Agency report.
