Bringing back joy & pleasure

Last weekend, Pakistan’s rising literary stars and a handful of fiction writers, journalists and poets from India, Bangladesh, UK and the United States gathered to kick off the country’s first literary festival in the pulsing port of Karachi...

In the last ten years, authors of Pakistani English language fiction such as Mohsin Hamid, Nadeem Aslam and Mohammed Hanif have gained increased recognition in the international literary scene, winning accolades and prestigious prizes such as the Betty Trask Award, the Kuriyama Prize and the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize. But until last weekend, there had never been a forum within Pakistan to discuss and celebrate this phenomenon.

Last weekend, Pakistan’s rising literary stars and a handful of fiction writers, journalists and poets from India, Bangladesh, UK and the United States gathered to kick off the country’s first literary festival in the pulsing port of Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city and its financial and economic center. Although the festival was announced to the public merely a day before the inaugural event due to security concerns, the festival’s sessions drew an enthusiastic and diverse audience of Karachiites who listened eagerly to authors discussing their work and debating issues such as the role and challenges of contemporary South Asian English Literature.

It was an idea that the festival’s organisers hatched after attending India’s DSC Jaipur Literature Festival in 2009, which British historian William Dalrymple has guided from its beginnings as a small gathering of writers and critics in 2005 to the largest and most prestigious literary event in Asia.


Full report here Deccan Herald