Jaipur Literature Festival – Our city’s pride

The recent Bharat Ratna awardee Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya had said that we should fully understand our literature, culture and arts in order to know ourselves. The literature from not only our region or country but the world literature also shapes our thinking and worldview. We should always keep a good quality literary book with us of any kind, be it fiction, non-fiction, biographies, poetry etc, on any subject of our interest e.g. philosophy, history, science, arts, environment or any other subject. We can start with the popular novels of Chetan Bhagat, Ravinder Singh but we also should read other Indian and foreign authors whose works are popular and/or awarded by the prestigious literary awards like the Nobel Prize in literature, Man Booker Prize, Sahitya Akademi Award etc. We are lucky that our own city hosts the world’s largest free literary festival, Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF).  

This year’s JLF would take place from 21-25 January, 2015 at Diggi Palace, Jaipur. Many famous personalities like Nobel Laureate V.S. Naipaul, Man Booker nominee Neel Mukherjee, best-selling novelist Amish Tripathi, prominent Hindi poet Kedarnath Singh, the philosophical essayist Nassim Nicholas Taleb  and many others from the fields of journalism, cinema and theatre. 

Namita Gokhale, writer and co-Director of the Jaipur Literature Festival, said about JLF, “Come January, a cloud of creative energies gathers around Jaipur. Writers and thinkers from South Asia and around the world will once again debate and attempt to make sense of our changing worlds through the prism of literature. The 2015 edition will continue to nurture books, ideas and dialogue, and showcase the range and diversity of South Asian literature as well as the best in international writing.”

Literature should and must find its place in our daily life. Young minds of this country should develop the habit of debate, dialogue and discussion which make them independent and original thinkers. It is the privilege of Jaipur, an already historic city, to hold this historic event.