Jaipur Festival (Jan 17-21)

This year’s Jaipur Literature Festival is set to shine a spotlight on the past as the annual event welcomes leading historians from across the globe. Winners of about 19 international literary prizes including Nobel Prize winners Amartya Sen and Harold Varmus. More than two hundred and fifty writers are expected to take part in hundreds of interesting sessions from January 17 to 21 this year at Diggi Palace, Jaipur.

To begin with, Andhra Pradesh will be seeing two of its literary figures taking part in this mega event: Lalita Kumari Popuri also known as Volga and Vamsee Juluri. Lalita Kumari is currently engaged in feminist writing and is member of an editorial collective by the name “ Soot from Kitchen” ( in Telugu it is Vantinti Masi). She is on the advisory board of National Book Trust for Telugu literature. Her novels ‘ Sahaja’, Sweccha’’, ‘kanniti keratala vennela’,’ Akasam lo sagam’, and ‘Gulabeelu’ depict her passion for feminism.

Vamsee Juluri is a professor of Media Studies in University of San Francisco. Penguin books published his latest book” Bollywood Nation: India through its Cinema”. Having done his PhD in Communications from Massachussets University, Vamsee Juluri is well conversant with the dynamics of media vis a vis society. His other books are Mythologist and Longing and Belonging of India Music Television. He is a great fan of Mahatma Gandhi and his ideals.

The name that perhaps may be a hit with Indian crowds would be Jhumpa Lahiri, the Pulitzer Prize winner for her debut work ‘Interpreter of Maladies’ and now a member of President” Committee on Arts and Humanities of the United States of America. This organisation began in 1982 by the initiative of Ronald Reagan and normally headed by the First Lady. It is now headed by Michelle Obama. Her presence here at Jaipur is sure to provoke many things that might interest the lovers of literature . She does not agree with the concept of Immigrant Literature as told by Tayie Selasie, author of Ghana Must Go, who spoke to her on this issue.

Anthony Beevor is a war veteran trained inworld famous Sandhurst academy . His books based on war in fiction and non fiction have sold more than four million copies worldwide . He is winner of Britain’s three biggest prizes for non-fiction: the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Wolfson Prize for History and Hawthorden Prize. This groundbreaking historian, is the trend setter of new style of prose that led the way for many contemporary non-fiction writers. He will visit the Festival to discuss the Second World War from a global perspective. Rana Mitter will recount the epic, untold story of China’s devastating eight-year war of resistance against Japan – a war which later lead to China becoming an ally of the West. Some have claimed Forgotten Ally rewrites the entire history of the Second World War, whilst offering surprising insights into contemporary China. In another session, marking 100 years since the start of the First World War, Australian war historian Peter Stanley, and writers Geoff Dyer and Maya Jasanoff will discuss the Indian subcontinents role in the conflict, along with military historian Rana TS Chhina.

Emma Rothschild’s celebrated book The Inner Life of Empires is a study of the plantation-owning Johnson family, who were at also at different times speculators, slave owners, government officials, and occasional politicians in America. Gaiutra Bahadur descendent of Indian origin migrated centuries back through the efforts of the British empire to grow Sugar Cane in West Indies, looks at the other end of the plantation pecking order: the coolies. In fact she looks like an Indian girl next door. In Coolie Woman she excavates the repressed history of some quarter of a million female coolies and chronicles their epic passage from Calcutta to the Caribbean. Both writers will discuss the legacy of plantations on contemporary India at JLF.

Jesus Christ of Nazareth has been a topic of constant interest since he lived and died some 2,000 years ago. Reza Aslan, who authored the much acclaimed No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and The Future of Islam, offers a compelling argument for a fresh look at the Nazarene in his latest book, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth focusing on how Jesus the man evolved into Jesus the Christ. The New York Times bestselling author and professor at The University of California will visit JLF to share his findings on the man who is the leader of one of the world’s biggest religions.

David Cannadine, professor of history at Princeton, will argue that in its heyday the British Empire was more concerned with exporting a class system to the colonies that it was with a hierarchy by race. He will discuss his views and his latest book The Undivided Past: History Beyond Our Differences at JLF. Also looking at the British Empire, Harvard’s Professor Maya Jasanoff will present her book, Liberty’s Exiles, a remarkable account of the global Diaspora of Americans who fled their home country once the last British troops pulled out of New York on November 25, 1783. One in forty Americans left the newly independent America for other parts of the British Empire. Jasanoff’s account of this time in history recently won the George Washington Book Prize.

Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott Clark will visit the festival to tell the stories of the guests, staff, police and the National Security Guard involved in the November 2008 terrorist attacks on the Taj Mumbai. By piecing together transcripts between the terrorists and their handlers, the authors have produced The Siege, the ultimate account of the attack that shook India. Also there will be participation of Mark Marzetti who shot to fame by exposing the activities of CIA with regard to Al-Qaeda detainees .

In their latest graphic novel, Vishwajyoti Ghosh and Ahmad Rafay Alam rewrote personal and political history of partition. Using oral histories and intensive personal research, Urvashi Butalia has also written poignantly about the multiple tragedies that took place during the partition of India. These writers will renegotiate the maps of memory at JLF in conversation with Indrajit Hazra.

Ancient Rome and Medieval Vijayanagar empires are going to be in hot sessions. The archaeologist and architectural historian George Mitchell who has spent half his life mapping and digging the Vijayanagra, one of the greatest cities in the world and in many ways the capital and cultural hub of Southern India, will tell the story of its rise and eventual fall in 1565. Even further back in time, well-respected and well-loved British historian Mary Beard will visit JLF to recount the fate of another lost city, Pompeii. Destroyed by Vesuvius in 79 CE, the ruins of Pompeii offer the best evidence we have of life in the Roman Empire. In The Fires of Vesuvius, Cambridge Prof. Beard makes sense of the remains.

Jaipur Literature Festival is also the official venue for announcing the DSC Literary Award which carries a whopping $50000 prize. This year’s short listed authors are: Anand for Book of Destruction, Benyamin for Goat Days, Cyrus Mistry for Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer, Mohsin Hamid for How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, Nadeem Aslam for The Blind Man’s Garden and Nayomi Munaveera for Island of a Thousand Mirrors.

Another event to be conducted on the side lines from 18 to 20 January at Narain Niwas Palace, Jaipur is the Jaipur Book Mark 2014 in which publishers, writers, agents from South Asia and other parts of the World will have a conference and meet each other programme. Norway is the partner country. It is expected that hundreds of bigwigs in the publishing industry will be meeting here.

A speciality this year is the sponsoring Darbar Hall, a part of JLF by Mahindra Humanities Centre of Harvard University. They will sponsor all the sessions that take place in Darbar Hall and the sessions are named as Crime and Punishment. The Director of the Centre Dr.Homi K.Bhabha, Professor at Harvard University will conduct the sessions. He was here last year as participant and he famous for his philosophical works. A Crime Writers Association is going to be launched here . Kishwar Deasai will lead the initiative.

Entry to the 7th Edition of Zee Jaipur Literature Festival is FREE but registration is essential. The Festival, the world’s largest free literary festival, is directed by William Dalrymple and Namita Gokhale. The Festival is produced by Sanjoy K. Roy and Sheuli Sethi of Teamwork Arts.