Shuggie Bane author to address 1st virtual JLF
Award-winning Irish writer Colm Tóibín will also share secrets of his craft
Glasgow-born author Douglas Stuart whose blistering debut novel, Shuggie Bain, won the
2020 Booker Prize, will speak at the 14th edition of Jaipur Literature Festival, due to be celebrated virtually on February 19-28,
2021, over successive weekends.
“It’s been a joyous challenge to work on the programming for Jaipur Literature Festival 2021. We look at our transformative times and try to understand the future through the lens of the present and the past. Our hybrid digital outreach has opened up a new universe of possibilities,” festival co-director Namita Gokhale said.
In conversation with writer and playwright Paul McVeigh, Stuart will unravel the thought and process behind his novel which portrays the heartbreaking story of a working class family’s struggles with alcohol addiction, sexuality and coming of age.
During the festival, award-winning Irish writer Colm Tóibín (The Master, The Blackwater Lightship, The Testament of Mary and Nora Webster) will share the secrets of his craft with the audience as well as tidbits about his career. Meanwhile, homegrown author and filmmaker Devashish Makhija will explore the roots of Oonga, his eponymous novel about an adivasi boy’s adventures and his tryst with the paramilitary and the Naxalites prior to its official launch. The book is a powerful novel based on his film of the same name.
But the highlight of the festival, at least for doctors, scientists and journalists covering the pandemic, must be Randeep Guleria, Chandrakant Lahariya and Gagandeep Kang’s talk.
The three have coauthored Till We Win: India’s Fight Against The Covid-19 Pandemic.
They will discuss insights with Mirchandani.
Acclaimed author and historian Vincent Brown’s groundbreaking geopolitical thriller Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an their Maya
Atlantic Slave War takes on the Atlantic slave trade. In conversation with writer and academic Maya Jasanoff, Brown will unpack the complex narratives binding the histories of Europe, Africa and America, more relevant than ever in the era of Black Lives Matter and sociopolitical change. And, in conversation with Navtej Sarna, the former high commissioner of India to the United Kingdom, Marina Wheeler, lawyer, Queen’s Counsel and the ex-wife of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, will delve into the meanings of a Punjabi Sikh identity as the daughter of a woman traumatised
Partition.
Marina’s ancestry goes back to the city of Sargodha in West Punjab, present-day Pakistan.
These are just a few of the many attractions at the festival, which will also feature Noam Chomsky, Camilla Townsend, Karan Thapar, Basharat Peer, Tripurdaman Singh, Navin Chawla, Michael Sandel, Francesca Orsini, Kishwar Desai, Mukulika Banerjee and Meenakshi Ahamed, not to mention the inimitable, one and only, Shashi Tharoor.
So many conversations, such a bedazzling multiplicity of ideas.
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THE HIGHLIGHT of the festival, at least for doctors, scientists and journalists covering the pandemic, must be Randeep Guleria, Chandrakant Lahariya and Gagandeep Kang’s talk.