Hollinghurst, who won the 2004 Man Booker prize for The Line of Beauty, spoke about being slotted as a 'gay writer'.
The difficulties of translation, the Iraq war and Bollywood actor Rishi Kapoor kept the crowds invigorated on Friday, the second of the five-day Zee Jaipur Literature Festival at Diggi Palace hotel in Rajasthan's capital Jaipur.
Discussion at the session titled The Unravelling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq focussed on how the West messed up, leading to the creation of ISIS. Diplomat and one of the few Indians to have chaired the United Nations Security Council's (UNSC) Counter-Terrorism Committee Hardeep Singh Puri spoke about how the American policy of funding conflicts in West Asia to evict Syria's Bashar al-Assad led to the creation of ISIS, "the hydra-headed monster". "In my book (Perilous Interventions: The Security Council and the Politics of Chaos), I have on record Michael Fynn, who is Trump's choice for National Security Advisor, saying that America's 'wilful action to get rid of Assad led to the creation of ISIS," he said. Talking about the time the Bush administration went to the UNSC to intervene in Iraq on the assumption that (then Iraq president) Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, he said the Council felt that the statements were embroidered, leading to the Council's refusal of sanctions on Iraq.
Among the literary heavyweights who took to the stage on day two were British writer Alan Hollinghurst and Indonesian Eka Kuraniawan. In a conversation with Deborah Smith, this year's Man Booker International award winner for her translation of Korean novel The Vegetarian, Kuraniawan, whose Beauty is a Wound has been a huge bestseller worldwide, spoke about how he used magic realism as a political metaphor to write about the 'other'.
Hollinghurst, who won the 2004 Man Booker prize for The Line of Beauty, spoke about being slotted as a 'gay writer'. Bollywood actor Kapoor questioned the practice of naming public properties after politicians, makinig a case for other personalities who have contributed to the country's progress. "...Can you ignore the contribution of Lata Mangeshkar or JRD Tata? Why not name these structures after such figures rather than political leaders," the 65-year-old actor said.
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