The seventh Jaipur Literary Festival continues to amaze. With more than 2 lakh (200,000) participants crowding the Diggi Palace to listen and take part in the 175 sessions, the serendipity of the programming ensures that many if not all will be back for the next annual event from 21 to 25 January 2015.
Some find the festival too crowded and others may prefer less of Bollywood, sports, politics and spirituality. And there are the usual lot of skeptics who think it is either too good to be true or that it cannot sustain itself. In spite of having four staff
covering the event, The Wall Street Journal rhetorically suggests that as the exponential growth of the JLF audience has flattened, the content may be losing its edginess. Setting WSJ’s Joanna Sudgen straight, JLF co-director William Dalrymple told her, “The edginess is in the programming and the last two years have been the best two programs getting the mix right. We have sixty foreign writers and 200 Indians, many in non-English languages . . . It’s a very serious festival.” Dalrymple added, “It’s the best list in the world.”
As literary festivals and book fairs in India continue to multiply so do the
publishing conferences. Held at the nearby Narain Palace, the first Jaipur BookMark sustained interest over the three afternoons it was held, although at times one missed some excellent sessions at the Diggi Palace. Moreover, the festival organizers seem wholeheartedly committed to fine tuning and growing the BookMark platform which is likely to attract an increasing number of publishers, translators, illustrators, agents, technologists and publicists
