Curtain raiser | Jaipur Literature Festival 2023: Books, borders and everything in between

Jaipur Literature Festival, the 'Kumbh Mela of Literature'.

The Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) will have a Nobel Prize winner for the second successive year. After Indian-American economist Abhijit V Banerjee, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics with wife Esther Duflo in 2019, led the festival speakers last year, JLF will see another Nobel laureate, Tanzanian-origin British author Abdulrazak Gurnah, on the opening day of the five-day event beginning on January 19.

Tanzanian-origin British author Abdulrazak Gurnah, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021, will deliver the keynote address of the 16th edition of the Jaipur Literature Festival to be held from January 19 to 23.

Gurnah, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021, will deliver the keynote address. The author of such acclaimed novels as Afterlives (2020), By the Sea (2001) and Paradise (1994), is expected to delve at length on identity and borders drawing from his own experience as an 18-year-old refugee in England more than four decades ago. In his first visit to JLF, described as the "Kumbh Mela of Literature", the Zanzibar-born author is certain to reminisce about growing up in an archipelago on the East African coast that had a huge population of migrants from India.

"It is a special year. We have so many new award-winning writers, those who have won the Nobel Prize, Booker Prize, Pulitzer, Sahitya Akademi award and many more," says festival producer Sanjoy K Roy, who predicts this year's programming to reflect the state of the world. "The writers will make sense of the world for us," says Roy, managing director of JLF producer Teamwork Arts.

"There is a session on Russia about how the Ukrainian invasion got to the point where it is today. There is so much of history and geopolitics, economy and environment, technology and climate justice, and many sessions on democracy," says Roy. "The speakers from India and abroad will also break down the wall between the arts and science."

After a deferred hybrid edition during March last year, the JLF will be returning as a physical edition to its new venue, the Hotel Clarks Amer, where it moved from its former heritage venue, the Diggi Palace."The Clarks Amer will be JLF's permanent venue," says Roy. During the last edition, Gurnah had joined the 2021 Booker Prize winner Damon Galgut and Abhijit V Banerjee in speaking at online sessions of the festival that was streamed across the world. "We will continue to stream the festival sessions online like last year. The sessions from three venues will be live and the remaining two will be deferred," adds Roy.

Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka, who won the Booker Prize last year for 'The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida', is among the speakers this year.

Among the speakers this year is Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka, who made up for compatriot Anuk Arudpragasam's failure to win the Booker Prize in 2021 for his novel The Passage North, by claiming the prestigious prize last year. Karunatilaka, the second Sri Lankan author to be shortlisted for the Booker in two years, will be a huge draw at the JLF where he is expected to speak about his new novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. The novel, published in India as Chats with the Dead in 2020, uses satire and spirits of victims of Lanka's catastrophic civil war to ask tough questions to the powerful in the society.

British author Bernardine Evaristo, who shared the Booker Prize for her novel, Girl, Woman, Other, in 2019 with Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, will be a star speaker on the opening day of the festival.

British author Bernardine Evaristo, who shared the Booker Prize for her novel, Girl, Woman, Other, in 2019 with Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, will be a star speaker on the opening day of the festival. Geetanjali Shree, who won the International Booker Prize last year for the English translation (Tomb of Sand) of her Hindi novel, Ret Samadhi, will speak about her works and the literary wealth in the Hindi language. The growth of Hindi as a spoken, written and translated language across the world today will be a topic at a session that will be attended by Cervantes Institute, New Delhi, director and eminent Sanskrit scholar Oscar Pujol.

A German veterinary scientist is certain to draw huge audiences to her session on how pastoralism is key to the future of livestock in the world. Ilse Köhler-Rollefson, the author of Camel Karma (2014) and Hoofprints on the Land (2023), will talk on the Raika camel nomads of Rajasthan, a pastoralist community whose traditional culture could help save the planet from the ill-effects of the industrial animal agriculture. Köhler-Rollefson, who arrived in India for a brief research work on the camel nomads in Rajasthan three decades ago, made the desert state her adopted home to work with its camel herders.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be a big theme at the JLF this year. Australian professor Toby Walsh, an international expert on AI, will speak on tech morality based on his new book, Machines Behaving Badly: the Morality of AI (2022). Ageing will be another important session led by British physician Carol Black, the Chair of the British Library's Centre for Ageing Better, in the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic heaping untold distress on the elderly. Expect some straight talk on ageism and discrimination. Black will be joined by HelpAge India CEO Mathew Cherian, and Nidhi Chawla and Reshmi Chakraborty, co-authors of Rethink Ageing: Lessons in Ageing from the Older and Bolder Generation.

British art historian and curator Katy Hessel, the author of 'The Story of Art Without Men', will talk about the forgotten women artists of the world.

Why only Picasso and Renoir? Why not women artists? The forgotten women artists of the world from the 16th to the 21st century help us understand the patriarchy within the art world, British art historian and curator Katy Hessel, the author of The Story of Art Without Men (2022), will tell the JLF audience. American writer and critic Anna Della Subin's session is devoted to her debut book, Accidental Gods (2021), a provocative history of race and empire told through stories of men who have been worshipped as gods. Portuguese writer Ana Filomena Amaral, author of Chasing Walls (2019), will deal with her favourite topic, the story of walls, from the Berlin wall to those in North Korea, Belfast in Northern Ireland, Western Sahara, Israel, Mexico, and the slums in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil where a wall was built to prevent tourists from witnessing reality during the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

Portuguese writer Ana Filomena Amaral, author of 'Chasing Walls', will deal with her favourite topic, the story of walls.

British financial historian Edward Chancellor, the author of The Price of Time (2022), will tell the history of interest rates from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia to the global credit booms of the 21st century. British archaeologist Richard Blurton, the author of India: A History in Objects (2022), will talk about linking history through art and Australian professor David Raubenheimer, professor of Nutritional Ecology at the University of Sydney and author of Eat Like Animals (2019), will present his study on how humans can learn about balanced diet from animals.