The countdown for the 2017 edition of the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF), which incidentally is also the 10th anniversary of the festival, began at a well-attended event at Hotel Taj Mahal in New Delhi, on 13 January 2016. The show began with a keynote address by Sanjoy Roy, the producer of the show, followed by welcome speeches by directors of the event, Namita Gokhale and British author William Dalrymple. Marvelling at the spectacular success achieved by the festival over the last 10 years, Roy spoke of the days when it was just an idea whose time had come, after being inspired by the Edinburgh Literature Festival and how it was a wonderful gesture by the Diggy family of Jaipur to offer their palace to host the show.
Roy was at his witty best when he claimed that the JLF is the world’s largest free event of its kind and is aimed at the masses unlike what some folks perceive it to be. He light heartedly reminded those present at the show that even the seat availability was on first-come-first-serve basis and no special privileges have been extended to anyone irrespective of their reputation. Namita thanked patrons for their unwavering support to the festival. Dalrymple asserted that now the JLF has overtaken the Edinburgh festival by becoming the
world’s biggest literature festival attracting enthusiasts from all over the world.
Jaipur BookMark
The Jaipur BookMark has been conceptualized as a B2B event in 2014 and is held alongside the JLF. The event provides a platform for publishers, literary agents, translation agencies and writers to meet, talk business deals, listen to speakers from across the world, and perhaps even sign important contracts. This year’s event attracted delegations from the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, France, Norway as well as as key Indian language publishers. The Indian English language publishing market is now the second largest in
the world after the United States while the native languages publishing market is also growing very fast. Jaipur BookMark 2016 brought to the publishing and translation market a Global Rights Translation Catalogue with a select list of eight works on offer for translation from across six Indian languages.
The catalogue is available on the JLF website and at Teamwork Arts’ literary events across the globe, and will also be available for digital, film and publication rights. The organizers maintain that in the days ahead, translation will become a prime area of focus and they will
soon be introducing the literature of India’s eastern states of West Bengal, Assam, Manipur and Orissa to a wider audience.
