New entrants to list of lit fests

The literary season is upon us, and the country is awash in festivals this year - with two new ones added to the crowded Delhi lit calendar. The Hindu is bringing its three-day festival, starting Sep 25.

There is now indication that corporates see literary festival as intellectual properties which have good shelf life in terms of recall and, hence, a right vehicle to reach premium audiences.

Last week, media group Deccan Chronicle signed up with KLF as its title sponsor.

The Thiruvananthapuram leg of the two festival will now be called the Deccan Chronicle-Kovalam Literary Festival. The Delhi leg will be presented by Financial Chronicle, the multi-edition business daily of the group.

This comes soon after the Catholic Syrian Bank became co-sponsor of the KLF. The KLF has now garnered sponsorships of Taj Hotels and Resorts, Kerala Tourism and ICCR, the cultural wing of the Indian government.

Many publishers like Penguin India, Harper and Westland support such festivals where their authors are showcased.

Binoo K John, author and founder director of KLF, says the success of the Jaipur Lit Fest as a showcase book event has a lot to do with the new corporate interest in such intellectual properties.

Full report here IBNLive

Long-list for first DSC Prize out

A bunch of contemporary South Asian authors, including Indian names like Amit Chaudhuri and Upamanyu Chatterjee and young writers from Pakistan such as H M Naqvi and Ali Sethi were today named in the long-list of the first DSC Prize for South Asian Literature.

The prize, whose long-list has 14 books, carries an award money of USD 50,000, and will recognise English writing in the South Asian region. The long-list and the jury were announced here today.

The jury for the prize includes internationally acclaimed literary figures Lord Matthew Evans, Ian Jack, Amitava Kumar, Moni Mohsin and Nilanjana S Roy who is the Chairperson.

The award was announced in January this year by infrastructure firm DSC, which is the main sponsor of the prestigious Jaipur Literature Festival.

The short-list of five from among the 14 selected works will be announced at the DSC South Asian Literature Festival, scheduled to be held in UK at the end of October, and its winner will be declared at the Jaipur literature festival in January next year.

The long-list includes Amit Chaudhuri's The Immortals, a story set in the Mumbai of 1970s and early 1980s, Mumbai-based Chandrahas Choudhury's Arzee the Dwarf and Upamanyu Chatterjee's Way to Go.

Full report here Outlook

14 authors on South Asian literature prize long-list

Acknowledging the diversity of literature emanating from the region, the DSC Limited Tuesday announced a long-list of 14 works of fiction as also the five-member jury of the first DSC prize for South Asian literature.

The prize carries a purse of $50,000. The DSC Ltd organises the Jaipur Literature Festival in the pink city every year.

The long-list includes Way to Go by Upamanyu Chatterjee, The Middleman by Mani Sankar Mukherjee, The Immortals by Amit Chaudhuri, Arzee the Dwarf by Chandrahas Choudhury, The Story of a Widow by M.A. Farooqui, and The Immigrant by Manju Kapur, among others.

The names of the six short-list books will be announced by October-end at the DSC South Asian Literature Festival in London and the winner at the Jaipur Literature Festival in January 2010.

The titles are either set in South Asia or centre around south Asian protagonists and bring forth typical concerns upholding the socio-political and economic milieu of the region.

Full report here Sify

‘I operate in a slow fashion'

Her first novel, The Pleasure Seekers, has received much praise from the likes of Salman Rushdie and Roddy Doyle. Now all set for the book's India launch this week, Tishani Doshi opens up to RANVIR SHAH about the various influences that have impacted her style.

Chennai-based Tishani Doshi has so far been known as a journalist, dancer and award-winning poet. Her first collection of poetry, Countries of the Body, won the Forward Poetry Prize for best first collection in 2006. She also freelanced for various publications in India and abroad. Using her foundation in yoga, she worked with the legendary Indian choreographer, Chandralekha, and continues to perform all over the world. Tishani has appeared at Hay, Segovia, Galle, Berlin, Jaipur and Cartagena Festivals. Her first novel The Pleasure Seekers has been received with much acclaim abroad. In an exclusive interview in Chennai just before the book's India launch, Tishani talks about her maiden novel and future plans. Excerpts from the conversation:

How many years did it take you to write this book? I remember hearing in the media that it was coming out soon for quite a while now?
I moved back from London to write the book. It took a total of eight years. I met Chandra, started to dance at the same time as I started work on this and wrote poetry as well.

The last six years I was deeply immersed in it. I made the mistake of talking about the book in my enthusiasm, I was editing it for three years, it was invaluable. At the first draft I thought it was quite grand, but my publishers (Bloomsbury) in England guided me not to rush into it. This they said was my building block and foundation and everything else I did would be seen in reference to this.

Full report here Hindu

India scopes online book market

India is a country where book sales and numbers of publishing houses continue to grow, and not merely among the English-reading elite of nearly 11 million.

This country is also exhibiting a range of viewpoints when it comes to how the Internet factors into the work of books.

At the Jaipur Literature Festival earlier this year, India’s best-known investigative weekly magazine, Tehelka, ran a cover story based on a survey of 1,152 people in nine Indian cities, which found that “people still prefer reading a book that they can dog-ear, fold and spill coffee on.”

Only 20 percent of respondents said they have read e-books, and 92 percent of these have read them on PCs.

Still, the time famine and diminishing attention span that modern lifestyles impose on people mean that many readers in Indian metros are ready to turn to tools they can carry on the go… whether that means audiobooks, e-readers, netbooks, or video.

Full report here internet evolution

Untouchable prejudice: Dalit literature

A VIBRATION of sympathy ran through the audience at the recent Jaipur Literary Festival in Rajasthan as author Omprakash Valmiki, his voice trembling with indignation, spoke of the daily humiliations suffered by his community.

As one of India's 160 million ''untouchables'', Valmiki is part of an emerging genre of writers now telling their stories of centuries of abuse under the rigid and hierarchical Hindu caste system. Brimming with anger and bitterness at the injustices meted out by upper caste Hindus for more than 2000 years, the writing has a singular quality to it: raw and jagged, full of anger and pain.
His people, Valmiki told the audience, were not allowed to wear decent clothes, ride on a horse during marriage processions, draw water from the village well or remain seated while an upper caste person was standing.
Indeed, the very word ''untouchable'' hurts - denoting a status so lowly it falls outside the caste system, a system that deems untouchables too filthy for higher castes to touch, and which has in the past decreed that molten lead be poured into the ears of untouchables who tried to memorise Hindu sacred texts, and that the tongues be cut from upstarts who dared to read them.
Hardly surprising then that many of India's 160 million untouchables would rather be known by a term of their own choosing, ''Dalit'' - the word is derived from the Sanskrit for destroyed or crushed - much as African Americans rejected ''Negro'' during the civil rights movement in the US.
As Valmiki spoke, the largely upper caste audience almost visibly winced with embarrassment. Dalit children, he continued, were seated apart in school, forced to sweep the classroom and given water in different glasses. Upper caste Hindus refused to be treated by a Dalit doctor or rent their homes to Dalits for fear of ''pollution''.

Full report here The Age

Myanmarese writer Ma Thida, in India for the recent Jaipur Literature Festival, opens up about what it means to be a doctor and an activist and how the two impact her writing.

Ma Thida, writer, human rights activist, and practising surgeon from Myanmar, has deconstructed her role in life and abides by her beliefs, convictions and her writer's instincts with a simplicity that both charms and puzzles.

The author of The Sunflower and In the Shade of an Indian Almond Tree, among others, Thida has also documented the damage done to her country by successive repressive regimes. “I have been writing since 1985, 15 years already. Why should I give up writing?” In 1993, she was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for “endangering public peace, having contact with illegal organisations, and distributing unlawful literature.”

Way of release
She found a way of release through Vipassana and meditation. “I started reading Buddhist teachings at the age of 13, so my first exposure to reading was through religious books. I went to a meditation retreat when I was 16 or 17 but it was without a calling from the heart. As a Buddhist I had to do it. But when I had to serve a term for 20 years, I thought ‘Why not take advantage of being in prison to change my life and get out of the cycle to find total liberation… not physical freedom but total freedom. So I meditated for 20 hours. When I was younger, I used to be aggressive, angry, arrogant. After Vipassana, I changed.”

On being both doctor and writer, she says, “I started writing when I began medical school so both go together; it's not a big deal. I manage both since I write from my heart. I am happy to read anything. I like autobiographies; I love to know about people. Fiction is my next choice. Some people's lives have touched me, like Gandhi and Mother Teresa.”

Full report here The Hindu

One for the Books

The puffy saffron tents overflow with literati - and the scent of manure wafting from nearby stables. Honking cars drown out the shaky sound systems amplifying panel discussions. Immortals of the pen and Bollywood idols alike jostle in long lines for meals of soupy dal and curried potatoes. Welcome to the Jaipur Literary Festival.

Why would Nobel laureates, major literary prize winners, world-renowned historians, famous poets and critics all beat a path around the globe to a dusty Indian provincial city.

Despite widespread perceptions that reading and serious literature are going out of fashion, festivals like Jaipur - places to mingle with well-known authors, often supplemented by musical performances and special events - are thriving world-wide. Most of the big-league ones are held nearer to where a good many more English-language writers live: Among them are New York's six-year-old PEN American Center World Voices Festival of International Literature, with its star-studded roster supervised by noted author Salman Rushdie, and the Guardian Hay Festival staged in Wales every May since 1998. The latter has branched out into popular franchises in places such as Nairobi and Belfast and added Spanish-language festivals in Segovia, Spain, and Cartagena, Colombia.

Full report here Wall Street Journal 

Words that touch

Untouchable, maybe. But no longer unread.

Omprakash Valmiki, born into India's lowest social group, the Dalits - known widely as "untouchables" -- says he was the first member of his family to "ever see the inside of a school building."

For 40 years he has worked for the Ministry of Defense in Dehradun - but by night the bureaucrat was doggedly composing poems and fiction. And when Mr. Valmiki came to the 2010 Jaipur Literary Festival to participate in a series of panels meant to recognize the importance of so-called Dalit literature, he drew larger crowds than many of the internationally known authors there. He was mobbed for autographs, and his works - which include the Hindi-language autobiographical novel Joothan: A Dalit's Life, published in English translation in the U.S. by Columbia University Press - were among the first to sell out at the festival bookshop. (The English translation also appears with the subtitle "An Untouchable's Life.")

Full report here Wall Street Journal 

'I am a realist'

Nobel Laureate and Nigerian author Wole Soynika, in India recently for the Jaipur Literature Festival, chats about his writing and his activism. “There is a belief in the Yoruba tradition that a child must be rich in names whatever happens later on, so uncles, grandfathers and great grandfathers all give names so that the child is very wealthy and my names are..."

Wole Soyinka is solemnly speaking about his roots with a twinkle in his eyes and reeling off a string of names. “…and one or two others which I can't remember… in addition to our lineage. In the lineage song, which has the interpolation of all those names, you feel like a king.

A poet, playwright, myth-maker, essayist, memoirist, translator, Soyinka slips into each role with ease. “The subject generally dictates the form in which it falls naturally.” On the lives of ordinary human beings caught between opposing forces of creation and destruction that form the basis of his writing, Soyinka said, “I wouldn't think that my responses to the realities of existence and the entire history of humanity can be based on this statement. I'm passionate about the whole issue of human liberty, human freedom and that all human beings are born with a fundamental attribute of the spirit of choice, to formulate one's principles of existence and follow them, as long as they are not inimical to the right of others. I live in a continent, which is my immediate constituency and is confronted by a robbery of fundamental rights, then I use literature as my weapon with which I fight them."

Full report here Hindu

The lure of the local litfest

Almost the first person I run into at the David Sassoon Library at Mumbai’s Kala Ghoda festival is an old schoolmate who now heads one of India’s top-100 companies. We met just a few weeks ago at the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF).

“I’m here for the headliners,” he had said then, explaining that the JLF allowed him to maximise his (rare) holiday time by corralling Niall Ferguson, Steve Coll, Lawrence Wright and Anne Applebaum in one location. Surprised that he would be attending sessions on children’s writing, local Mumbai histories and Dilip Chitre’s poetry at the much-smaller Kala Ghoda literary festival, I ask whether he comes here often. “Yes,” he says, and introduces me to three other men from the corporate world. “This might be smaller, but it’s our best chance to catch up with local writers. I’m here every year.

Kala Ghoda is relaxing in a way that the increasingly adrenalin-fuelled JLF can no longer be. The latter offers a kind of intellectual crack cocaine; it’s exhilarating, attention-getting, but “restful” is not the word that comes to mind if you’re attending back-to-back sessions at the Diggi Palace.

Full report here Business Standard

Giving voice to Botswana

Alexander McCall Smith has been to India five times, the latest at this year's Jaipur Literature Festival. But the desire for Indians to meet him has not dimmed a bit. He was he one of the stars - not just for the quality of his writing, but his approachableness, which saw him mingling with journalists and fans without losing his sang froid, for the crowd this year was huge.

He was part of quite a few panel discussions as well. And each one was well attented, nay overflowing. And he amply brought out his debt to the writing of one particluar Indian - RK Narayan, who, in his view, should have got the Nobel Prize.

While most Indians read him in English, his books are also available in translation in Tamil and Marathi, and Malayalam is on the anvil.

The coverage for him was extensive in the media. Some articles:
"It's what I like to do'  The Hindu
From Botswana via Malgudi Times of India
Tea Time for the Traditionally Built, By Alexander McCall Smith Independent
The No 1 Ladies Man Indian Express
'I hear rhythms of prose in my mind' Financial Express