The fourth edition of the four-day Kerala Literature Festival, organised by the DC publishers in Kerala, will kick off at Kozhikode on Thursday. Historian Ramachandra Guha will deliver the keynote address, while Arundhati Roy, Harsh Mander, Swami Agnivesh, Shashi Tharoor, Jeet Thayil, P. Sainath, Miki Desai, Anita Nair, Karan Thapar, Keki Daruwalla, Devdutt Pattanaik and several others will attend the event. The global focus this year will be on Welsh literature, while the Indian focus will be on Marathi writing.
Writers and scholars from Asia, America and Europe, Sri Lanka, Spain, Sweden, Belgium and Czech Republic will mark their presence at the event. There will be also Jnanpith Award winners—Sitakant Mahapatra, Pratibha Ray, Bhalchandra Nemade and M.T. Vasudevan Nair—attending the event.
"We also have a special venue for a parallel, theme-based film festival curated by Bina Paul where films by women across the world will be screened and discussed, besides cultural programmes every evening by Indian and foreign artists and musicians. A book fair will also accompany the literary festival," wrote festival director K. Satchidanandan in a note.
As dusk fell in Kozhikode beach, the venue of the festival, the bookstore owners shooed away the bystanders and started pulling tarpaulin over their manuscripts. "We are really excited for this event," says Sadia, a graduate student. "We do get a chance to meet our favourite authors.”
"We expect over 200,000 people over the next four days," said Ravi DeeCee, one of the organisers of the event. "The edition of the KLF focuses on various issues topics. Since it is the post-flood period, there are major areas of discussion on environment, and rebuilding Kerala. The primary focus is on literature and need for intellectual discourse on topics. Renaissance being an area of discussion, there are over 15 sessions on makers of modern India and Kerala. Popular fiction is being discussed in detail with celebrated writers. We will also ensure the idea of pluralism spreads across,” he said.