World’s largest free literary festival ends on a high!

Described as the ‘kumbh of literary festivals’, the 10th edition of the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival was successfully held from January 19-23, 2017 at Diggi Palace, Jaipur. Over 400 world leading names and minds in the fields of fiction and non-fiction writing created a feast of words in the Pink City, including Javed Akhtar, Ashwin Sanghi, Lila Azam Zanhaneh, Prasoon Joshi, Richard Flanagan, Luke Harding, Bibek Debroy, Paul Beatty, Mallika Dua, Hardeep Singh Puri, Hyeonseo Lee, Alan Hollinghurst and Shashi Tharoor.

The authors invited to ZEE JLF 2017 represented writing in 30 languages and both ZEE JLF and its sister event Jaipur BookMark had a focus on the undervalued art of translation and the cultural benefits of sharing literature from around the world.

Jaipur BookMark also organised the second Oxford Bookstore Book Cover Prize, which was won by designer Pinaki De for the book Kalkatta by Kunal Basu. A second prize was awarded at Jaipur BookMark this year, the Vani Foundation Distinguished Translator Award to well known translator, poet, writer and critic Dr Anamika.

Next year, the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival will run from January 19-23, 2018. The Festival has already announced a handful of writers lined up for next year including Amy Tan, Arundhathi Subramaniam, Dipanker Gupta, Davesh Soneji, Graham Swift, Hari Kunzru, Ian McEwan, Mario Vargas Llosa, Michael Morpurgo, Michael Palin, Neil Gaiman, PJ Harvey, Rohinton Mistry, Sunita Narain, Viet Thanh Nguyen and Zadie Smith.