Recognised as one of the world’s greatest literary festivals, the Jaipur Lit Fest completes a decade in 2017. From notable authors to debut writers, you can listen, meet or interact with them at this largely free event that will be held at its usual venue, the Diggi Palace in Jaipur, Rajasthan, from Jan 19 – 23. Some of the main themes for 2017 are Freedom to Dream: India @ 70, The Magna Carta, Translation and World Literature, Women and Marginalised Voices, Sanskrit, and Colonialism and Legacy of the Raj.
During the curtain raiser in Delhi, the organisers said that the Festival will feature authors writing in Indian regional languages including Volga in Telugu, S.L. Bhyrappa and Vivek Shanbhag in Kannada, Kaajal Oza Vaidya in Gujarati, C.P. Deval and Hari Ram Meena in Rajasthani, Kanak Dixit and Binod Chaudhary in Nepali, Dhrubajyoti Bora in Assamese, Gulzar and Javed Akhtar in Urdu, Jatindra K. Nayak in Oriya, Naseem Shafaie and Neerja Mattoo in Kashmiri, Arunava Sinha and Radha Chakravarty in Bengali and Arshia Sattar, A.N.D. Haksar, and Roberto Calasso in Sanskrit. Writers in Hindi include Ajay Navaria, Anu Singh Choudhary, Manav Kaul, Mrinal Pande, Narendra Kohli and Yatindra Mishra.
International authors include winners of the Man Booker Prize Alan Hollinghurst and Richard Flanagan; Man Booker Prize nominee NoViolet Bulawayo ; Laurence Olivier award winner and two-time Academy Award nominee Sir David Hare; the poet Anne Waldman; bestselling author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni; 2016 Emerging Voices Award winner Eka Kurniawan; Nassim Nicholas Taleb and many others. The Italian writer and published Roberto Calasso, Neil MacGregor, the author of A History of the World in 100 Objects; the graphic novelist Amruta Patil and Alex Ross, the music critic for The New Yorker are other big names set to attend this year.
While General Registration for the Zee Jaipur Literary Festival is free, you have to pay a fee (early bird ₹5,000 per day) to become a delegate. Details of events and registration at jaipurliteraturefestival.org.