The annual Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) from 21 to 25 January 2016 at the Diggi Palace in Jaipur will bring together some of the best thinkers and writers across South Asia and the world. From Nobel laureates to Man Booker prize winners to local language writers and debut novelists, there is a great line-up of the participants at the festival. Among the international authors, the spotlight will be on poet, novelist and essayist Margaret Atwood, this year’s Man Booker Prize winner Marlon James, French economist and global voice on wealth and income inequality Thomas Piketty, Irish writer Colm Toibin and travel writer Colin Thubron. The line-up of Indian authors include storyteller Ruskin Bond, psychoanalyst and author Sudhir Kakar, Hindi poet and novelist Uday Prakash. Activist and writer Bant Singh with an inspiring story of resistance to the atrocities he suffered as a Dalit will also be one of the honoured speakers. His biography The Ballad of Bant Singh will be launched at the festival.
The organizers held an event in New Delhi on 3 December 2015 to present some of the expected highlights of the event next month. The preview event saw a panel discussion on ‘The Need to Listen – Dialogue versus Rhetoric’ moderated by Sanjoy Roy, festival organizer and director of Teamwork Arts. The participants were former diplomat author and Rajya Sabha MP Pavan Verma, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor and former TV journalist and politician Shazia Ilmi. Columnist Sudheendra Kulkarni and Gaddi Nashin of the Ajmer Sharif Dargah Syed Salman Chishti also took part.
“Each year at Jaipur, we try to produce a programme more remarkable than the year before, but this year has to be our most astonishing line-up ever. Among the international authors, we present writers of genius as diverse as economist Thomas Picketty and humourist and polymath Stephen Fry. We deeply delve into three areas of world literature we have so far failed to explore – notably the novelists and poets of the Balkans, the Caribbean and Central America – while returning to examine eternal classics such as the work of Shakespeare, Proust and Andal,” said writer and festival co-director William Dalrymple.
Jaipur BookMark
Conceptualized as a B2B segment two years ago, the third edition of Jaipur BookMark (JBM) will have a mix of readings and panel discussions. It will be held on January 21 and 22 in parallel with the festival. It will feature a catalog of a select list of works on offer for translation, samples of translations for publishers and agents to get a feel of the work, discussions on rights sales and contracts for print, digital and film.
“JBM is a unique opportunity bringing together publishers, agents, festival directors and authors at the back of the annual Jaipur Literature Festival. It is also being developed as a platform for acquiring translation rights across languages and platforming the best non-fiction and fiction across Indian languages,” said Roy.
“Jaipur BookMark provides a dynamic platform for a meaningful dialogue between traditional publishing and latest technology. JBM is also a perfect networking opportunity for international publishers and their South Asian counterparts,” said Neeta Gupta, publisher and co-organizer of Jaipur BookMark.
