Despite its literary history, international lit fests have somehow deserted India. Until now. If you are a literature lover, there’s good news for you. The city is gearing up to lure book worms through Literature Live! Mumbai LitFest. The festival will bring together renowned personalities from the literary world that include William Dalrymple, David Davidar, Amitav Ghosh, Ramachandra Guha, David Godwin, Ian Jack, Suketu Mehta, R Sriram, Shashi Tharoor and Sir Mark Tully, who are also part of the advisory committee. There will be book launches of authors Vikram Seth, CY Gopinath, Mark Tully among others.
Anil Dharker, festival director, says, “There have been Hindi, Urdu, Bengali literary festivals in different parts of the country. But literary festivals in English probably didn’t happen because English writing isn’t as prolific as it is now. This is therefore the right time to have an international festival in Mumbai.”
Interestingly, there will also be cultural performances like The Last Mughal; Finkelstein’s Castle; Whale Song, a long-distance love song; a cabaret concerto called Death’s Cabaret; Ramprahar and a comedy titled Spent. Reasons Anil, “We wanted to look at literature not as an academic exercise but as something lively and exciting. So although we wanted to make sure that the four verticals of literature (fiction, non-fiction, poetry and plays) were represented, we also wanted to look at the written word in other forms. When you think of it, films television, even songs start with the written word. So having performances was a natural extension of this broader definition of literature.”
Among the highlights, Anil says, “There is English cellist Mathew Sharp who tells stories while playing the cello and accompanied by other musicians. We have William Dalrymple doing a reading from The Last Mughal accompanied by an Indian classical singer something he has not done before in India.”
m_jayeeta@dnaindia.net
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