What is it about literary festivals and readers? Why do readers flock to hear their favourite writers and get books signed? Why are such festivals an important part of the literary calendar?
In India, the literary festival cycle begins at Jaipur, which hosts one of the country’s biggest literary events. Though the Jaipur Literature Festival may be at the top of the carnival of books, through the year, there are literary festivals in several cities including Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Thiruvananthapuram, Bhubaneswar, Dehradun, and Dumka. Literature apart, there is music, art, theatre and a host of other activities, which add to the festive atmosphere.
This year, at the Dumka Literature Festival, readers of the Jharkhand town got to listen to Geetanjali Shree about her International Booker Prize-winning novel Tomb of Sand, translated by Daisy Rockwell from Ret Samadhi in Hindi. Her presence in Dumka brought her new readers, and her session, ‘How I Came to Writing’, must have been an inspiration for those wanting to take up the pen.
At the recent Bhutan Echoes’ Drukyul’s Literature Festival, Ms. Shree spoke about the importance of embracing your mother tongue and the joy of learning as many languages as possible. “There’s no reason to have only one language. Polyphony gives a culture its richness,” she said. Indians in the audience nodded, but also the Bhutanese — in the tiny kingdom, 24 languages are spoken all over.
Literary festivals usually invite Nobel Laureates and other prizewinners. Abdulrazak Gurnah, who bagged the 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature, was in attendance at Jaipur this year. There is already a buzz around the French memoirist Annie Ernaux who won the Prize in 2022, and whether she will be in India next year.
To discover writers old and new, a festival is sometimes the perfect place. A prize usually helps draw more attention to a writer’s oeuvre. Accolades for Nagaland’s Easterine Kire (When the River Sleeps) or Dalit writer Manorajan Byapari (Interrogating My Chandal Life – An Autobiography of a Dalit) at The Hindu Lit for Life introduced their work to a wider audience.
During the Kolkata Literary Meet this year, one of the best sessions involved writer Damodar Mauzo, who lives in Goa and writes in Konkani. Jerry Pinto, who hosted it, drew Mr. Mauzo out gently to talk about his layered stories of a cosmopolitan Goa where many faiths and communities have found a way to live together. He spoke about his famous novel, Karmelin (1981), the story of a mother and her struggle to bring up her daughter in a village in south Goa, and his short stories (The Wait and Other Stories and Teresa’s Man and Other Stories from Goa).
For literary festivals, the venue too adds to the atmosphere. Bhutan Echoes was held at the Royal University of Bhutan with its intricate wooden interiors and beautifully decorated exteriors. In the backdrop were cloud-capped, blue-green mountains, a perfect sight for a breather during sessions. The Kolkata Literary Meet is held on the grounds of the British Raj-era Victoria Memorial, which prompted Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka to joke that some colonial ghosts may be hovering around to listen to him talk about his ghostly Booker Prize-winning tale, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida.
The curtains have just come down on the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the world’s largest book festival. It is a perfect fit for the city, designated as the world’s first UNESCO City of Literature in 2004. Scotland is the birthplace and home to renowned writers such as Robert Burns, R.L. Stevenson, Walter Scott, Arthur Conan Doyle, Muriel Spark, and Ian Rankin. This year, one of the star attractions was a young Scottish writer, Martin MacInnes, whose Booker Prize 2023-longlisted novel, In Ascension, has moved readers and critics alike.
For more such discoveries, here is to Jaipur, from February 1-5, 2024, where stories will once again hope to unite writers and readers — and other literary festivals.
sudipta.datta@thehindu.co.in
