New Delhi: The past decade has seen the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival grow into the world’s largest free event of its kind. Having hosted 1300 speakers and welcoming nearly 1.2 million book lovers, the success of JLF has been astonishing and heartwarming.
Celebrating writers from across the globe, the Festival has hosted some of the best regarded and loved names, ranging from Nobel Laureates and Man Booker Prize winners to debut writers such as Amish Tripathi, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Eleanor Catton, Hanif Kureishi, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Ian McEwan, JM Coetzee, Margaret Atwood, Mohammed Hanif, Oprah Winfrey, Orhan Pamuk, Pico Iyer, Salman Rushdie, Stephen Fry, Thomas Piketty, Vikram Seth and Wole Soyinka, as well as renowned Indian language writers such as Girish Karnad, Gulzar, Javed Akhtar, MT Vasudevan Nair, Uday Prakash as well as the late Mahasweta Devi and UR Ananthamurthy.
Writers and Festival Directors Namita Gokhale and William Dalrymple invite authors from across the globe to take part in the five-day programme set against the backdrop of Rajasthan’s stunning cultural heritage and the Diggi Palace in the state capital Jaipur.
Equity and democracy run through the Festival’s veins, placing some of the world’s greatest writers and thinkers from all walks of life together on stage. All events are completely free and there are no reserved spaces; this egalitarian access is a powerful statement in a country where access to such individuals remains the privilege of a few. On top of all this, people are guaranteed to have fun!
As Time Out said: “It’s settled. The Jaipur Literature Festival is officially the Woodstock, Live 8 and Ibiza of world literature, with an ambience that can best be described as James Joyce meets Monsoon Wedding.”
The ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival is a flagship event of Teamwork Arts, which produces over 25 highly acclaimed performing arts, visual arts and literary festivals across more than 40 cities globally, and is produced by Sanjoy K. Roy.
In 2014, ZEE JLF spread its wings beyond the borders of India with an annual event in May in London. The following year, ZEE JLF headed across the pond to Boulder, Colorado where it hosts a similar event every September.
The ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival's ninth announcement of 10 authors, as part of #10Speakers10Weeks is also revealed today.
1. Ashwin Sanghi is an Indian writer of thrillers. He is the author of three novels, The Rozabal Line, Chanakya's Chant and The Krishna Key. He is one of India's bestselling conspiracy fiction writers and retells Indian history and mythology in a contemporary context. He has featured on Forbes India’s ‘Celebrity 100’ list. His latest novel, The Sialkot Saga, was released in April 2016.
2. Deborah Smith’s translations from the Korean include The Vegetarian (winner of the International Man Booker Prize) and Human Acts by Han Kang as well as A Greater Music and Recitation by Bae Suah. Smith is the winner of the Arts Foundation Award for Literary Translation and runs Tilted Axis Press, a publisher of contemporary Asian fiction in translation.
3. Naseem Shafaie was born and brought up in Kashmir and began writing Kashmiri poetry in 1988. She is the author of Open Window and Neither Shadow Nor Reflection, which won the Tagore Award for Excellence in Literature and the Sahitya Akademi Award. She is the first Kashmiri female writer to receive both awards.
4. Shazi Zaman is a well-known Hindi author whose latest novel Akbar deals with the inner and outer battles of one of India’s most influential emperors. His earlier novels are Premgali Ati Saankri and Jism Jism Ke Log. A journalist by profession, he is Group Editor of ABP News Network and has worked with the BBC, Star News, ZEE News, Aaj Tak and Doordarshan.
5. Sunil Khilnani is the author of The Idea of India and, most recently, Incarnations: A History of India in Fifty Lives, which was accompanied by his 50-part BBC radio and podcast series. Among his other publications are: Arguing Revolution: The Intellectual Left in Postwar France, several collaborative volumes as well as essays on Gandhi, Tagore, Nehru and contemporary Indian art and photography. He is currently Avantha Professor and Director of the India Institute at King’s College London. He has been a Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge, the Woodrow Wilson Centre, Washington DC, the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin and the American Academy in Berlin. He is a regular contributor of essays, articles and comment to the international media.
6. Aarathi Prasad was born in London to an Indian mother and a Trinidadian father, and was educated in the West Indies and the UK. After a PhD in genetics she worked in research, science policy and communication, presenting documentaries for the BB, Channel 4, National Geographic and the Discovery Channel. She is the author of Like A Virgin: How Science is Redesigning the Rules of Sex and In the Bonesetter’s Waiting Room: Travels Through Indian Medicine. She works at University College London.
7. Anita Anand is a television and radio presenter working for the BBC. She has fronted a number of flagship political programmes in the UK and has been a columnist for a national newspaper. In 2015, Anand released her first book, Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary, to international critical acclaim. Her latest book is Kohinoor, co-written with William Dalrymple.
8. Brigid Keenan is an author and journalist. She has worked as editor on Nova Magazine, The Observer and The Sunday Times. She has published two fashion histories as well as Travels in Kashmir, Damascus: Hidden Treasures of the Old City and the bestselling Diplomatic Baggage.
9. Bruce Robinson trained as an actor at London’s Central School of Speech and Drama. Despite being cast in several prodigious movies, he abandoned acting to pursue a career as a writer. His first ever realised screenplay was The Killing Fields, for which he was nominated for an Oscar. Subsequent to that he has written and directed many films including Withnail and I, How to Get Ahead in Advertising and The Rum Diary, starring Johnny Depp.
10. Christopher Sykes is a photographer and author of 27 books, including, as a photographer, Great Houses of England and Wales, The Gardens of Buckingham Palace and The Rolling Stones of Tours, and as author, Eric Clapton, which he co-authored with Eric Clapton and Hockney: The Biography.
The updated list of speakers attending the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival 2017 includes:
1. A.N. Wilson
2. A.N.D. Haksar
3. Aarathi Prasad
4. Abhay K.
5. Adam Thirlwell
6. Aditi Goyal
7. Aishwaryaa Rajinikanth Dhanush
8. Ajay Navaria
9. Alan Hollinghurst
10. Alex Ross
11. Alexandra Buchler
12. Alka Pande
13. Ambika Dutt
14. Amrita Tripathi
15. Anant Vijay
16. Andrew Roberts
17. Angelica Freitas
18. Anindita Ghose
19. Anita Anand
20. Anjali Singh
21. Anne Waldman
22. Antara Ganguli
23. Anu Singh Choudhary
24. Anuradha Beniwal
25. Arefa Tehsin
26. Arshia Sattar
27. Arunava Sinha
28. Ashok Desai
29. Ashok Ferrey
30. Ashutosh Varshney
31. Ashwin Sanghi
32. Atul Kanak
33. Audrey Truschke
34. Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir,
35. Barry Cunliffe
36. Bee Rowlatt
37. Bhrigupati Singh
38. Bibek Debroy
39. Binod Chaudhary
40. Brigid Keenan
41. Bruce Robinson
42. Bryan Ward-Perkins
43. C. Raja Mohan
44. C.P. Deval
45. Cemal Kafadar
46. Chandrahas Choudhury
47. Chintan Chandrachud
48. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
49. Chitra Soundar
50. Christopher Merrill
51. Christopher Sykes
52. Claire Breay
53. Clare Azzopardi
54. Claudia Hyles
55. Dambisa Moyo
56. Danish Sheikh
57. Dattatreya Hosabale
58. David Armitage
59. David Cannadine
60. David Carpenter
61. David Hare
62. David McWilliams
63. David Park
64. Deborah Smith
65. Deepa Agarwal
66. Devdutt Pattanaik
67. Devesh Kapur
68. Dexter Filkins
69. Dhrubajyoti Bora
70. Divya Mathur
71. Durgaprasad Agarwal
72. Dushyant
73. Eka Kurniawan
74. Eluned Gramich
75. Emma Sky
76. Eric Akoto
77. Francesca Orsini
78. Franck Thilliez
79. Frank Trentmann
80. Geeta Samaur
81. Giles Milton
82. Gopi Kallayil
83. Guillermo Rodríguez
84. Gulzar
85. Ha-Joon Chang
86. Hardeep Singh Puri
87. Hari Ram Meena
88. Harsha Dehejia
89. Helena Kennedy
90. Hindol Sengupta
91. Hridayesh Joshi
92. Hyeonseo Lee
93. Imayam Annamalai
94. Inga Žolude
95. Ira Trivedi
96. Ishion Hutchinson
97. Issa Asgarally
98. Jaisal Singh
99. James Barr
100. James McHugh
101. Janhavi Prasada
102. Jatindra K. Nayak
103. Javed Akhtar
104. Jim Mallinson
105. John Elliott
106. John Guy
107. John Keay
108. Jon Wilson
109. Jonathan Shainin
110. Jyoti Malhotra
111. K.C. Maloo
112. Kaajal Oza Vaidya
113. Kala Ramesh
114. Kanak Dixit
115. Karim Alrawi
116. Kate Tempest
117. Kavita Singh
118. Keki Daruwalla
119. Kunga Tenzin Dorji
120. Kyoko Yoshida
121. Lila Azam Zanganeh
122. Linda Colley
123. Lucinda Hawksley
124. Lucy Beresford
125. Luke Harding
126. Luke Syson
127. M.A. Baby
128. Madeleine O’Dea
129. Madhav Khosla
130. Madhup Mohta