“The division was quite apparent in some of the press coverage – the Times of India barely mentioned any writers other than those ethnically or nationally Indian. (Jonathan) Franzen needn’t have bothered coming, for all the attention the paper paid him. (Jhumpa) Lahiri, born in London and a US citizen, happily counts as Indian for the Jaipur audience on the basis of her ethnicity,” said Philip Hensher, The Guardian columnist complaining about the lack of coverage given to Western authors who visited the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) last year.
With so many well-known Indian authors writing in English, overseas from across the world sometimes get the short shrift in the Indian dailies. The audience at Jaipur is however anything but parochial or provincial. The heterogeneity of the speakers and audiences at Jaipur make the experience worthwhile for all who take part. If Hensher had only looked beyond the Times of India he would have found a happy mix of international and national authors getting an equally enthusiastic response from the 250,000 odd visitors – perhaps unique to JLF now entering its tenth year.
In our November issue we wrote about Adam Johnson, Bettany Hughes, Ahmed Rashid, Cat Weatherill and Adam LeBor along with Indian speakers Arvind Panagariya, Amish Tripathi, Ashwin Sanghi, Chetan Bhagat, Sangeeta Bandopadhyay, and Sudha Murthy. There are more than two hundred speakers at the JLF this year and we will attempt to cover a few more in this preview.
Fiction and non-fiction
It is not easy to write both fiction and non-fiction with aplomb. The international flavour this year seems to be on authors who have both mastered the art of writing fiction and nonfiction. Among these at Jaipur this year will be American travel writer, Paul Theroux, whose best-selling works The Great Railway Bazaar, The Old Patagonian Express and Hotel Honolulu have inspired several films.
Other authors participating at JLF 2015 include Gary Bass of Princeton University, Chinese author Jung Chang, author of best sellers Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China and Mao: The Unknown Story, Swedish crime writer, Hakan Nesser, and Kai Bird, the Pultizer Prize-winning historian and journalist.
Elizabeth Gilbert the best-selling author of both fiction and non-fiction known for Eat, Pray, Love which sold over 10 million copies and The Signature of All Things (named as the Best Book of 2013) and Nicholson Baker will be at JLF. Baker has more than 30 titles to his credit including The Mezzanine which was written in 1988 about the thoughts of a man during lunch time. Vox is a 1992 work – a highly erotic conversation between two people on a 900 number party line. In 2008 Baker wrote Traveling Sprinkler which is a novel about a poet who no longer loves writing poetry but keeps remembering his lost love.
Kalam at JLF
Former president of India, scientist and author APJ Abdul Kalam will speak at JLF 2015. APJ Kalam has authored a collection of poems, The Luminous Sparks and Wings of Fire: An Autobiography, India 2020 – A Vision for the New Millennium, My Journey: Transforming Dreams into Actions and Ignited Minds: Unleashing the Power within India, Inspiring Thoughts, and Children Ask Kalam. The 83-year-old Kalam, an inspirational speaker, is very popular with ‘teen India’ and will likely send the temperature soaring at JLF. Anita Anand who is a BBC television and radio presenter and political analyst based in London will present her new book, Sophia which tells the story of Sophia Duleep Singh – princess, revolutionary, social and political activist.
Mahua Maji, the chairperson of the State Commission for Women, Jharkhand is an acclaimed novelist, sociologist and short story writer. Some of her best known novels are Main Borishailla and Marang Goda Neelkanth Hua. One is also looking forward to hearing Neel Mukherjee whose first novel Past Continuous won the Vodafone Crossword Award and the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Award. Mukerjee’s recent novel The Lives of Others has been well received by critics and readers alike.
