Set to take place between 24-28 January 2019, the annual high noon of literature will return to its customary home, Jaipur’s glorious Diggi Palace Hotel –for its 12th edition. Followed by its Mumbai preview, the Festival held its Delhi preview in partnership with the Taj Group of Hotels at the Taj Mahal Hotel recently. A roster of high-profile speakers was unveiled at the Delhi launch, like every year, reflected the diversity of the Festival’s programming in books, themes, subjects, and ideas representing literature and thoughts intrinsic to both India and the world.
The literary ‘Kumbh’ has hosted nearly 2000 speakers and welcomed over a million booklovers over the past decade, evolving into a global literary spectacle. This year, the Festival will host over 350 speakers writers, thinkers, politicians, journalists and popular cultural icons from across a vast array of nationalities, representing several Indian and international languages as well as major awards such as the Nobel, the Man Booker, the Pulitzer, the Sahitya Akademi, the JCB Prize for Literature and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature.
The list of speakers features a stellar line-up of Indian and international names covering issues as kaleidoscopic as the classics, war, espionage, intelligence, politics, environment and climate change, women and gender, management and entrepreneurship, technology, along with broader themes such as mythology, crime science, history, cinema.
Commenting on the 2019 issue, writer and Festival Co-Director William Dalrymple said, “I am thrilled to launch our line-up in Delhi. The audiences that come to the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival always contain a large number of Delhi literature-lovers and our list of star writers is always full of Delhi literati.”
Sanjoy K. Roy, Managing Director of Teamwork Arts, producers of the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival, said, “The annual ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival brings the world to India and takes India to the world. Over 300 speakers covering a range of topics will converge on one of the loveliest heritage cities in the world weaving stories of hope and resilience, love and betrayal. A veritable celebration of the written word!”
The Delhi Curtain Raiser featured a spectacular performance by qawwali singers, the Qutbi Brothers, and a panel discussion: ‘The First Draft of History: The Perils of Journalism’ with Saba Naqvi, Suhasini Haider, Jeffrey Gettlemen, Nikhil Kumar and Neelesh Misra which was moderated by Swati Chaturvedi. The Mumbai Curtain Raiser is slated for December 5 in partnership with Avid Learning at the Royal Opera House where the Festival programme will be unveiled.
