JAIPUR: The Jaipur Literature Festival, touted as the “greatest literary show on earth”, returned to the Rajasthan capital on Thursday for its 15th edition.
The festival, which has put the north Indian city of Jaipur on the world map of literary events, was virtually held last year due to the COVID-19 restrictions.
This year, it debuted online on March 5 with “A Life in Stories,” a session in which Tanzanian-born 2021 Nobel laureate in Literature Abdulrajak Gurnah took attendees on a chronological tour of his life.
On Thursday, the festival moved to its on-ground venue at Hotel Clarks Amer in Jaipur, where it will continue till March 14.
“It is a pleasure to be back in physical form and to host the festival in the presence of the people,” Sanjay K Roy, the festival’s managing director, told Arab News. “We thought that we would have to host the festival online again, but we are glad that we managed to find a conducive environment to hold the festival in physical form as well. This year the festival is taking place in hybrid mode and people have the option to watch both the online and offline seasons.
Addressing the audience during the inaugural session, the festival’s co-director Namita Gokhale said: “Revisiting the festival makes me emotional as I remember past editions of literary extravaganza involving different authors and their stories.”
Writer and historian William Dalrymple, who also serves as the festival’s co-director, said the pandemic was an “existential threat” to the artists, whose livelihoods were affected by the lockdown.
“But now we are back,” he said, “with four Nobel laureates!”
Besides Gurnah, the festival also features Abhijit Banerjee, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2019; Daniel Kahneman, who won the same award in 2002; and Giorgio Parisi, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2021.
The visitors were welcomed in the morning with a performance of “Raag Miya Ki Todi” by Ujjwal Nagar, the maestro of Hindustani classical music.
Thursday’s sessions covered issues of climate change and geopolitics.
German Ambassador to India Walter J. Lindner, who participated in a discussion on the importance of world peace, told Arab News that he came to the event because of the panel.
“This is my first time at this literature festival and I was wondering if I should come because of the ongoing Russian war against Ukraine,” he said. “I thought I should come because there was a panel on War and Peace.”
Tanzanian-born novelist Abdulrajak Gurna wins Nobel Literature Prize at Jaipur Literature Festival