The programme at Zee JLF 2017 will touch upon a multitude of ideas and themes. Freedom to Dream: India at 70, which explores India today in the context of its history as well as its future, Translations and World Literature, Women and Marginalised Voices, Sanskrit, and Colonialism and the Legacy of the Raj are among the themes for the next JLF.
At the curtain raiser event at the Taj Mahal Hotel, New Delhi, co-directors Namita Gokhale and William Dalrymple shared their insights about the much anticipated event.
Namita Gokhale, writer and publisher, said, “We live in times where the cycles of change are puzzling, often disruptive. Books are the answers to these puzzles.Literature is the force that links and binds human stories, and contemplates the human situation. In an increasingly parochial and polarised world, literature helps us scale the walls. And translation is the tool that helps us access cultures and knowledge systems. This year’s festival is more multi vocal than ever before, with about thirty languages represented there.”
Talking about her latest book with Guardian20, Gokhale said, “Yes, there will be a session on my novel, Things to Leave Behind at the festival. I am so glad that it is happening. For the past ten years I have put the festival before myself. I used to tell myself that the festival is more important than my writing. I think the festival has got its own place in the world now and I feel that I have to start writing again. I am so delighted that my new book has got such a good reception and I have actually begun already on another book. I want to go back to being a writer because that is something I had put on the back burner for a while. The festival has given me so much and now the writing world is calling me again.”
With around 30 languages represented from India and across the world, the JLF will feature authors writing in Indian regional languages, including the popular Volga in Telugu, S.L. Bhyrappa and Vivek Shanbhag in Kannada, Kaajal Oza Vaidya in Gujarati, C.P. Deval and Hari Ram Meena in Rajasthani, Kanak Dixit and Binod Chaudhary in Nepali, Dhrubajyoti Bora in Assamese, Gulzar and Javed Akhtar in Urdu, Jatindra K. Nayak in Oriya, Naseem Shafaie and Neerja Mattoo in Kashmiri, Arunava Sinha and Radha Chakravarty in Bengali, and Arshia Sattar and A.N.D. Haksar in Sanskrit. Writers from the sphere of Hindi include Ajay Navaria, Anu Singh Choudhary, Manav Kaul, Mrinal Pande, Narendra Kohli and Yatindra Mishra.
International writers include winners of the Man Booker Prize Alan Hollinghurst and Richard Flanagan; NoViolet Bulawayo, who was the first African woman to be shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2013; Laurence Olivier award winner and two-time Academy Award-nominee Sir David Hare, is making his first visit to the festival this time round; internationally acclaimed poet Anne Waldman; bestselling author, poet, activist and teacher Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni; 2016 Emerging Voices Award winner Eka Kurniawan; Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who predicted the 2008 global financial crisis; writer, journalist and broadcaster Simon Winchester; the “literary institution of one”, Italian writer and published Roberto Calasso; Neil Mac Gregor, past director of the National Gallery London and the British Museum and author of A History of the World in 100 Objects; American Journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning Dexter Filkins; Alex Ross, the music critic for the New Yorker and the author of the books The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century and Listen to This; Ha-Joon Chang whose books, including 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism and Economics: The User’s Guide will have been translated into 40 languages and published in 43 countries; and Linda Colley, award-winning historian, academic, author and broadcaster who specialises in post-1700 British history and author of Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 and Acts of Union and Disunion.
“It’s been an extraordinary journey from 16 attendees ten years ago to a third a million today. On the way we have brought many of the world’s greatest writers to India and showcased Indian writing to the world. We have ignited a million minds to the wonders of literature. This year will be our most irresistible spread of literary genius yet.
Historian, writer and co-director of JLF, William Dalrymple, was also present at the recent event in Delhi. “It’s been an extraordinary journey from 16 attendees ten years ago to a third a million today. On the way we have brought many of the world’s greatest writers to India and showcased Indian writing to the world. We have ignited a million minds to the wonders of literature. This year will be our most irresistible spread of literary genius yet. There will also be few sessions on art history represented by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,” said Dalrymple who recently co-authored Kohinoor: The Story of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond with Anita Anand.
Alongside, there is a new partnership with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) which will carry a discussion on “Citizens and Borders: Migration and Displacement” based on a series of discrete projects across the Museum of Modern Art in New York, related to works in the collection offering a critical perspective on histories of migration and displacement.
In association with the festival, the fourth edition of Jaipur BookMark (JBM) was also announced. The Jaipur BookMark this year opens a day earlier and then runs alongside the JLF at the same venue, the Diggi Palace Hotel, 18-23 January. Jaipur BookMark is a dynamic forum for the global publishing industry, with seminars, talks and discussions focused on the emerging South Asian books and allied markets. The event also creates a unique platform for publishing professionals from across the world to come together and connect with their South Asian counterparts over issues facing the industry as a whole. The main focus of JBM 2017 continues to be translation and exploring how to ensure South Asia’s translated stories make it to readers around the world.
The evening in Delhi also featured a programme of music and poetry titled Bhakti: Resilience, Resistance and Resonance. Musical performances with powerful dramatic readings and translated renditions were performed by Arundhati Subramanian, Harpreet Singh, H.S. Shivprakash and Parvathy Baul.
For more information readers can visit: www.jaipurliteraturefestival.org