Jaipur litfest: Stage set for congregation of authors, book lovers

Yash Goyal

Jaipur, January 18

The tenth edition of the Jaipur Literature Festival-2017 is all set to host world's largest congregation of litterateurs and book lovers at Diggi Palace here from Thursday.

The inaugural session will begin with morning music by Shillong Chamber Choir followed (by) speeches of two prominent poets -- Gulzar, lyricist and film maker, and Anne Waldman, an American poet, also an active member of the Outrider experimental poetry community as writer, performer and editor.

The JLF will focus on theme "Freedom of Dream-India@70”, exploring conversations around modern India in the context of its history and its future.

Apart from all other usual and exciting events, it will display a facsimile of a historic treaty, the 1215 AD Magna Carta on loan to India from British Library, Sanjoy Roy, JLF founder, said on Wednesday.

It expects to host over 300 literary minds from all over the world and footprints of over 350,000 guests in five days with over 100 sessions. 

This year a controversy shrouded the event from the beginning of preparations as JLF included RSS ideologues Manmohan Vaidya and Dattatreya as speakers.

Scores of Bollywood stars like Rishi Kapoor, Javed Akhtar, Imtiaz Ali, Maanav Kaul, Swanand Kirkire and S S Rajamauli will also be seen in interacting sessions.

Namita Gokhale, its co-director, writer and publisher, said this time a special focus is on translations and the pulse of literature.

Ceaselessly celebrating the wonders of the dreaming mind, the JLF invokes the collective energy of our brilliant authors and extra-ordinary audiences, she said on the eve of JLF.