Five-day Jaipur lit fest begins today, Nobel laureate Gurnah to deliver keynote address

The festival will cover subjects such as the ongoing climate justice debate under the urgency of borrowed time theme; great women writers and artists focusing on the female voice and identity, crime fiction, memoir, translation, poetry, economics, tech morality and artificial intelligence, the global crisis in agriculture, Russia-Ukraine conflict, violence unleashed by the British, cutting-edge science, India at 75, remembering Partition, geopolitics, art and photography, health and medicine, among others.

The festival will host Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah; historian, screenwriter and broadcaster Alex von Tunzelmann; International Booker Prize recipient Geetanjali Shree; celebrated poet, lyricist and author Gulzar; Padma Vibhushan Hariprasad Chaurasia; Sahitya Akademi Award recipient poet Anamika; Ashwin Sanghi; Booker Prize winning author Bernardine Evaristo; Sahitya Akademi Award recipient Chandraprakash Deval; novelist Chigozie Obioma; as well as Daisy Rockwell, Ravish Kumar, Nandan Nilekani, Javed Akhtar, Shashi Tharoor, Varun Gandhi, Shehan Karunatilaka, Ashwin Sanghi, Shrabani Basu, Onir, Shobhaa De, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Bibek Debroy, Amitabh Kant, Kishwar Desai, Makarand R Paranjape, and Usha Uthup, among others.

The keynote address in the inaugural session on Thursday will be delivered by the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Abdulrazak Gurnah.

Namita Gokhale, writer, founder and co-director of the JLF, said: “The festival affirms joy and creativity through books, ideas and shared narratives.”