London's Jaipur Literature Festival seeks to ‘build bridges between cultures’

EASTERN EYE is supporting this year’s Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) at the British Library next Friday (13) to Sunday (15) as its media partner.

“We are happy to do so as we aim to be ‘the voice of British Asians’, as we say on our masthead,” said Shailesh Solanki, executive editor of the newspaper.

JLF also seeks to attract all sections of the community in the UK.

Many of the speakers in this year’s event have featured in Eastern Eye in recent years.

For example, Sheela Banerjee won Eastern Eye’s Arts, Culture & Theatre Award (ACTA) in the non-fiction category last year for What’s in a Name: Friendship, Identity and History in Multicultural Britain.

Vaseem Khan, the first Asian chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association in 70 years, won an ACTA in the fiction category in 2018 for The Strange Disappearance of a Bollywood Star.

The BBC’s Reeta Chakrabarti was named best presenter in ACTA this year. She was also shortlisted in the fiction category for her debut novel featuring schizophrenia, Finding Belle.

In the newly introduced category for crime fiction, the winner was Ram Murali, author of Death in the Air, which has been described as “a love letter to Agatha Christie”.

Eastern Eye has also written about Sushma Jansari, who has curated the British Museum’s new exhibition, Ancient India: Living traditions.

Among the headline speakers this year is Banu Mushtaq, whose book Heart Lamp, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi, is the first short-story collection to win the International Booker Prize.

Ram Murali

Hanif Kureishi will be discussing his book, Shattered: “After a devastating fall in Rome, Hanif Kureishi was left immobile. From his hospital bed, he began to dictate powerful reflections on illness, identity, love, and writing. Shattered is the result: an odyssey of survival.”

JLF 2025 is bringing together some established authors from India, such as the MP Shashi Tharoor. His latest book, Our Living Constitution, “offers a masterful analysis of India’s constitutional framework, highlighting how it transcends political rhetoric to reflect the nation’s core ideals”, according to the festival organisers.

Although Tharoor belongs to the opposition Congress party in the Lok Sabha, India’s lower house of parliament, he expressed strong support for Narendra Modi’s Operation Sindoor military action against Pakistan. He was picked to lead one of seven Indian government delegations explaining New Delhi’s foreign policy in countries around the world, including Panama, Guyana, Colombia, Brazil and the US.

Other authors from India include William Dalrymple, whose Eastern Eye lecture on The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World at the Bhavan in London last October was attended by nearly 250 people.

His son, Sam Dalrymple, will be speaking at JLF on his book, Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia. This was shortlisted for an ACTA this year in the history category.

JLF describes his book as “a sweeping narrative of how the once-unified Indian empire splintered into 12 modern nations. Drawing on rare archives, untranslated memoirs, and interviews across multiple languages, Dalrymple excavates five key partitions that reshaped the political, cultural, and emotional geography of the region. From boardroom deals and battlefield lines to personal stories of loss, resistance, and reinvention, the session reflects on how borders are drawn and the human cost they carry.”

His father, William, one of the founding directors of the festival, said: ”At JLF London at the British Library, we bring together some of the finest minds from across the world to explore the great questions of our time – from the rise of AI to the legacies of empire, from the pleasures of food and art to the complexities of geopolitics.

“This year’s edition reflects the festival’s commitment to rich, nuanced discourse, bridging cultures and offering a truly global literary experience.”

Namita Gokhale, a festival co-director – she will be talking about the re-publication of her novel, Paro, which came out in 1984 – commented: “At this volatile moment of change and transformation, we seek to make sense of our fractured world, and to explore and understand it through our shared stories.”

The éminence grise behind JLF is Sanjoy K Roy, managing director of Teamwork Arts, which describes itself as “a highly versatile production company with roots in the performing arts, social action and the corporate world”.

Sanjoy K Roy

He said: “We celebrate the power of literary thought to foster meaningful conversations and build bridges between cultures through our sessions at JLF London. The 12th edition of JLF London hosts diverse themes ranging from history and artificial intelligence to culture and geopolitics, food and art.”

Incidentally, Roy will be speaking to Bafta-winning playwright David Hare, celebrated as “the finest living British dramatist”.

Hare will provide “a peek into his remarkable career that has redefined contemporary theatre. Renowned for iconic works such as Skylight, Plenty and Racing Demon, Hare’s plays explore the intricacies of politics, power, and human relationships with unflinching honesty and wit. His innovative storytelling, blending sharp dialogue with profound moral inquiry, has left an indelible mark on stage and screen.”

Support for the festival was expressed by Jamie Andrews, the British Library’s director of public engagement: “The British Library looks after one of the world’s most significant south Asian collections, and international collaboration is at the heart of our mission as a library.”

The British Library had a message for Asians in the UK and typically Eastern Eye readers:

“We are the national library of the UK and we are here for everyone. Our shelves hold over 170 million items – a living collection that gets bigger every day. Although our roots extend back centuries, we aim to collect everything published in the UK today, tomorrow and far into the future.

“Our trusted experts care for this collection and open it up for everyone to spark new discoveries, ideas and to help people do incredible things.

Sheela Banerjee’s award-winning book

“We have millions of books, and much more besides. Our London and Yorkshire sites hold collections ranging from newspapers and maps to sound recordings, patents, academic journals, as well as a copy of every UK domain website and blog.

“Our public spaces provide a place to research, to meet friends, to start up a new business or simply to get inspired by visiting our galleries and events. We work with partners and libraries across the UK and the world to make sure that as many people as possible have the chance to use and explore our collections, events and expertise. And we’re always open online, along with more and more of our digitised collection.”

After this year’s London Book Fair, Eastern Eye reported that the British Library republishes crime novels, which first came out decades ago.

This year, Shobaa De is likely to prove a big draw at JLF, which says that the celebrity writer and columnist “is unapologetically bold, fiercely candid, and never afraid to stir the pot. Her popular column, Politically Incorrect, and her bestseller novels like Socialite Evenings and the more recent Insatiable, have won her global acclaim. She has spent decades challenging conventions with her sharp wit and candid observations. Her upcoming book, The Sensualist, is a provocative look at passion, power, and the private lives of modern Indians. In an unfiltered conversation with Yasser Usman, De talks about writing, relationships, and the art of being unapologetically herself.”

Dr Deborah Swallow, an expert on Indian art, will take part in a session on “libraries, museums and archives”, and Asma Khan, founder of the restaurant Darjeeling Express, will talk about food.