Soliloquies

Back-of-the-book notes from the five-day event

Small is big: The presence of children on

the last two days of the DSC Jaipur Literature Festival 2013 illustrated something that Musharraf Ali Farooqi — whose recent translation of Dastaan-e-Amir Hamza (the adventures of Amir Hamza) has been internationally acclaimed — had mentioned on January 27. "I have no worries about the dangers of books going out of fashion as I've seen children are still fascinated by books and are reading them. Maybe it's the adult readers we should worry about," he said.

Missing Speakers: While Ashis Nandy beat a hasty retreat from the JLF following the controversy over his remarks, there were other star speakers who could not make it to the festival. Among them were Indian-born British artist Anish Kapoor and Pakistani writer Mohammad Hanif, who excused himself for "personal reasons". The "missing speakers" list also included Sudha Gopalakrishnan from the Infosys Foundation (who was supposed to participate in "Sanskrit: The Living Legacy" on Jan 27). On Sunday, author Benoy Behl was left to fend for himself when Sujata Chatterjee, who was supposed to introduce him to the audience, could not make it.

Over to 2014: The DSC Jaipur Literature Festival 2013 has ended and the calendar for next

year is out. JLF 2014 will be held from January 16 to 20. The list of participating speakers includes American actor-author-film director Stephen Fry, British travel writer Jason Elliot, Man Booker Prize-winning Irish novelist, dramatist and screenwriter Roddy Doyle,

English novelist David Mitchell, Swiss-born British writer and philosopher Alain de Botton and historian Linda Colley. Nobel laureate Amartya Sen will be there too.

Divya A & shantanu david

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