The Jaipur Literature Festival 2016 was a 5-day literary extravaganza which not only involved writers, but people from all spheres of life, be it media, cinema, politics, art or business. The common objective was to have a dialogue, exchange of ideas, of experiences and meeting their other half – the readers.
Neha Yadav from the IndiaBookStore team is reporting live at the Jaipur Literature Festival 2014. Read on to see what happened on the second day. The second day of Jaipur Literature Festival began like most of my days usually do- existential despair at having to get out of warm bed and into the cruel cold world that harbours horrors like lizards, overpopulation and Chetan Bhagat. The prospect of six hours of literary awesomeness finally got me out and we reached Diggi Palace just in time for the first event. Held in the Front Lawns at 10:00 am, ‘The Global Novel’ was a conversation about private identity and writing in an increasingly cosmopolitan world. The talk featured literary heavyweights like Jhumpa Lahiri, Jonathan Franzen, Jim Crace, Maaza Mengiste and Xiaolu Guo. The authors debated the importance and economics of the translation industry and the threat posed to indigenous languages by the mainstream literary market. Jim Crace’s unflinching faith in narrative was for me the highlight of the talk and I couldn’t help but nod earnestly when he said that storytelling is too deeply entrenched in the human consciousness and it will survive whatever the form. Next was ‘Burdens of Identity’ with…
Neha Yadav from the IndiaBookStore team is reporting live at the Jaipur Literature Festival 2014. Read on to see what’s happening at the most happening literary event of the year! We (yours truly and two friends) started out on the journey to Jaipur via Ajmer Shatabdi extremely sleep-deprived but full of the kind of nerdy excitement only people pursuing a bachelor’s degree in literature and history can. The train arrived half an hour late due to low visibility, making us miss the opening act. We checked in, threw luggage into the nearest available spot, finger-combed hair and rushed out to join the festivities. Armed with shiny participant passes, we made our way through brightly-coloured sea of people, shivering with both cold and restless energy. The festival complex is a series of aesthetically designed tents and temporary shelters, decorated in greens, blues and yellows with a lot of intricate mirror work. Beside these, there are stalls for optimistically overpriced food, coffee, handicrafts, traditional attire and books. The first event we attended was renowned feminist Gloria Steinem in conversation with Ruchira Gupta on the event of the launch of her new book As if Women Matter at Char Bagh. The topics under…
With over 240 attendees, this year’s Jaipur Literature Festival promises to be an engaging experience for all literature lovers, book fanatics, and even those who just want to get their pictures clicked with the literary hoi polloi….