Jaipur Festival
Margaret Atwood, David Grossman & Thomas Piketty are star attractions at litfest in Jan 2016
Canadian author Margaret Atwood, who has just released her latest novel The Heart Goes Last, Israeli author and peace activist David Grossman, French economist Thomas Piketty and Indian writer Ruskin Bond are the main attractions at the five- day literary festival in Jaipur, which kicks off on January 21 next year.
The annual literature festival on Thursday revealed the list of 165 Indian and international authors for the 2016 event. The ninth edition of the lit fest will take place from January 21 to 25 and will explore issues such as migration, privacy and navigating change.
Controversial Harvard historian Niall Ferguson, Steve McCurry, one of the world’s greatest living photographers and Britain’s national treasure Stephen Fry will be in attendance too.
Bosnian American fiction writer Aleksandar Hemon and Indian psychoanalyst and author Sudhir Kakkar will take centre- stage alongside India’s leading writers such as Hindi poet and author Uday Prakash, Sahitya Akademi awardees in the world of Assamese literature Rita Chowdhury and Dhrubajyoti Bora as well as prominent Gujarati poet and scholar Sitanshu Yashaschandra.
Homi Bhabha from the Mahindra Humanities Centre will curate a strand of sessions around the theme of privacy in the contemporary world. Contributors include British author and columnist Ben Macintyre. Frontline reporters will discuss conflict and its effect on the modern world with American reporter Dexter Filkins, English foreign correspondent Christina Lamb and CNN’s national security analyst Peter Bergen. Writer Lucy Hawking will talk about her extraordinary journey in transmitting the awe, wonder, and understanding of our universe to young readers.
Leading Indian writers at the festival will include Hindi writers Mridula Sinha, Alka Saraogi, Ashok Vajpeyi, Yatindra Mishra, Prabhat Ranjan, Harish Trivedi and Mridul Kirti and Bangla writer Anita Agnihotri among others.