Hailed as a grand and eloquent literary extravaganza worldwide, the ‘Kumbh of literature’, the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival 2019, opened today at its usual abode, the Diggi Palace Hotel, to continue its tradition of providing access to a gamut of ‘stories’ - fearless, funny, tender, fantastical, true-to-life, fiery, equivocal, atypical and everyday - to all.
Hailed as a grand and eloquent literary extravaganza worldwide, the ‘Kumbh of literature’, the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival 2019, opened today at its usual abode, the Diggi Palace Hotel, to continue its tradition of providing access to a gamut of ‘stories’ - fearless, funny, tender, fantastical, true-to-life, fiery, equivocal, atypical and everyday - to all.
The magnitude of programming remains as astonishing as every year; however, 2019 seems the most ambitious yet with over 500 speakers across around 15 Indian and 12 international languages, representing over 30 nationalities and awards ranging from the Nobel, the Man Booker, the Pulitzer, the Sahitya Akademi, the JCB Prize and DSC Prize for South Asian Literature.
Who’s coming
The twelfth Festival began today with the inaugural keynote by Nobel laureate Venki Ramakrishnan, author and President of the Royal Society.
It also features -
Man Booker-winner Ben Okri; Pulitzer-awardee Colson Whitehead;
Yale Professor and renowned astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan;
best-selling and prolific writer Alexander McCall Smith;
Man Booker-winning Yann Martel;
writer and essayist André Aciman whose Call Me by Your Name depicts a tale of enduring love; Andrew Sean Greer, New York Times bestselling-author and 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winner;
Germaine Greer, writer and academic, and one of the most significant feminist voices of our time;
Sohaila Abdulali, intrepid journalist and prolific writer whose 2013 Op-ed in The New York Times broke readership records,
Anuradha Roy, winner of the DSC Prize for Fiction 2016, and longlisted for the Man Booker 2015; Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, award-winning novelist, poet, activist and teacher of writing;
widely acclaimed British novelist and journalist Hari Kunzru;
former Newsnight anchor Jeremy Paxman, one of Britain’s best-known journalists and author of nine books;
Jeffrey Archer, master of the twist-in-the-tale, and number one in fiction 19 times;
Stegner Fellow at Stanford University NoViolet Bulawayo, the first black African woman and Zimbabwean to be shortlisted for the Man Booker;
Alvaro Enrigue, one of Spanish literature’s most accomplished writers.
Joining them are Ashwin Sanghi, ranked as one of India’s most popular authors; the irrepressible, fearless and delightfully irreverent Shobhaa De;
Usha Uthup – whose voice that ricochets straight off your soul; leading Hindi novelist, short story writer, playwright and satirist Narendra Kohli;
Neelesh Misra, versatile lyricist, radio storyteller, writer and founder/editor of Gaon Connection, India's biggest rural media platform;
the prolific Devdutt Pattanaik, who has made mythology chic in the modern day;
Manoranjan Byapari, who emerged as a writer, having learnt to read and write in jail at the age of 24,
Manisha Koirala, gifted actor and gritty cancer-survivor who recently returned to the screen; feisty film-maker Meghna Gulzar who will discuss her book Because He Is, in a session with her legendary father, Gulzar.
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