Jaipur Literature Festival has gone from a gem of an idea to becoming the largest free literary festival in the world. Over the years it has amassed nearly 1.2 million book lovers and hosted 1300 speakers. Here’s 6 award-winning authors attending the 10th year anniversary edition in 2017 that you should know:
The first and only American to have been awarded the Man Booker Prize, Paul Beatty, is a hip-hop poet and novelist awarded in 2016 for his satire on racial politics The Sellout. The panel of judges compared the 54 year old writer from Los Angeles to Mark Twain and Jonathan Swift calling it a “novel for our times” – particularly with relation to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Considered to be the finest Australian novelist of his generation, Richard Flanagan has received numerous awards and honours and each of his novels have attracted major praise. He was awarded the Man Booker Prize in 2014 for The Narrow Road to the Deep North. He would be discussing his life and works and in another session, joining other writers, he would be discussing whether printed fiction can compete with movies and television.
Formerly a Wall Street Journal China correspondent, Mei Fong is believed to be the first Malaysian to win a Pulitzer. This would be her debut appearance at the Jaipur Literature Festival where she will be discussing China in the 21st Century and whether its growth scale makes it an unstable entity waiting to explode or the global owner of this era.
Hari Ram Meena is a famed Rajasthani writer of eight books in Hindi including a collection of poems, travelogues and the novel Dhuni Tape Teer. He is the recipient of the Rajasthan Sahitya Akademi’s highest Meera Award, the Mahapandit Rahul Sankratyayan Award by Kendriya Hindi Sansthan, the 2012 Bihari Award by the KK Birla Foundation and the 2015 World Hindi Conference Award. He will be discussing literature and the redeeming narratives of assertion and transformation.
The prolific and popular writer S.L. Bhyrappa has been the bestselling novelist in Kannada for the past 50 years, in Marathi translation for the last two decades and one of the top five bestselling authors in Hindi translation. Bhyrappa has written 24 novels, most of which have been translated into nearly all the Indian languages as well as English. His best known novels are Vamshavriksha, Grihabhanga, Parva, Saakshi,Tantu, Saartha, Madra and Aavarana. Bhyrappa is the recipient of five honorary doctorates by universities in Karnataka, a Sahitya Akademi Award, the Sarawati Samman and various other national awards.
Born and brought up in Kashmir Naseem Shafaie started writing Kashmiri poetry in 1988. She is the first Kashmiri female writer to receive the Tagore Award for Excellence in Literature and the Sahitya Akademi Award – for her work titled Neither Shadow Nor Reflection. At the Jaipur Literature Festival 2017, she will be discussing the voices of women in war zones around the world and share experiences of violence, strife and discord.
