V S Naipaul, Elanor Catton set to attend JLF festival

A strand of sessions would showcase and celebrate the rich literature of the seven sister states of the North-East. “Following on from the popular theme of ‘Crime and Punishment’ from last year, this January’s festival will look at writing associated with ‘The Seven Deadly Sins’, as well as continuing a second strand of celebrated Women Uninterrupted series,” organisers said.

Following its debut this year, the ‘Jaipur BookMark’, a business to business platform is again set for two days from January 21. The platform offers a place for the global publishing community to come together and discuss issues and challenges faced by the industry, as well as the country’s rapidly changing digital and print publishing landscape.

Hindi writer Vinod Kumar Shukla, Bangla writer Sangeeta Bandopadhyay, Marathi Dalit woman writer Urmila Pawar and the dramatist Girish Karnad are all scheduled to attend. The festival programme includes Hindi, Urdu, Rajasthani, Marathi, Manipuri, Kannadiga, Telugu, Tamil, Sanskrit, Punjabi and Pali writers with more to be announced soon, organisers said.

“The festival has become one of the wonders of thinking world. The 2015 edition will continue to nurture books, ideas and dialogue, and showcase range and diversity of South Asian literature as well as the best in international writing,” says Namita Gokhale, writer and co-Director of the festival.

“This may well be one of the strongest international lists we’ve ever fielded at Jaipur with several writers I’ve been chasing for almost a decade,” says William Dalrymple, writer and co-director of the festival. Nicholson Baker, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Elizabeth Gilbert, Paul Theroux, Eleanor Catton, Kate Summerscale and Alberto Manguel are some of the authors, Dalrymple lists outs.

Major themes, he says, include meltdown in Middle East and Afpak, spies, historical fiction, alternative sexualities, memoir writing, cricket writing, as well as writing about politics, pirates, natural history and life cycle of the honey bee! “I can’t wait- it’s going to be our best year yet,” says Dalrymple. The event, says Sanjoy K Roy the festival producer “hasgrown year on year and last year welcomed over 2.5 lakh booklovers to the Pink City.”