Jaipur: The Jaipur Literature Festival starts on Thursday, and with a roll call of internationally acclaimed writers, poets and artistes, CNN-IBN quizzed festival co-directors Namita Gokhale and William Darlymple who they're most excited about.
Namita Gokhale, who has always put a great deal of emphasis on the inclusion of regional Indian writers, tells CNN-IBN, "I am very excited about all the excellent sessions programmed for Jaipur 2010, and by the sheer range and brilliance of the writers arriving at Jaipur soon.
Our special focus this year is on Dalit literature, and I am really looking forward to hearing and interacting with writers like Kancha Ilaiah and Omprakash Valmiki, whose work I greatly admire, and others on the panels and readings -- especially the closing session, 'A Million Suns: A Celebration of Punjabi Dalit Poetry', which includes readings by Des Raj Kali, and from the poetry of the late Lal Singh Dil, and has Iqbal Udasi singing the songs of her father, the revolutionary Sant Ram Udasi...
There's the tribute to Faiz, and "The Queen's Hinglish ", and Alexander McCall Smith, and Wole Soyinka, and Henry Louis Gates...I could go on and on...."
The line-up is certainly impressive.
William Dalrymple, who was the first to comment on the exponential growth of the Festival last year, shares this with us.
"There's a mix of pleasures this time. One of the things I enjoy most is introducing writers that are not so well known here, who should be... (for example bringing authors like) Wole Soyinka or Vikram Chandra are a sort of easy pleasure. What's also nice is when you find people who aren't well-known, like the brilliant Harvard scholar on 18th century India Maya Jasanoff... author of 'Edge of Empire' which is a fantastic read. There's also Louis de Berniere, a mega-star in Britain, who's not widely read in India. Though Captain Corelli's Mandolin sold millions of copies.
There's also the husband-wife duo Michael Frayn and Claire Tomalin who were up against each other for the Whitbread Prize. She's probably the greatest literary biographer in Britain.
And there's two Pulitzer Prize winners, Steve Coll and Lawrence Wright, experts on Al Qaeda and 9/11... And of course the usual (names that will attract a lot of attention) Amit Chaudhuri, Pankaj Mishra and Vikram Chandra, who are well known."
(For updates you can share with your friends, follow IBNLive on Facebook, Twitter and Google+)
displayed with permission. Use of the CNN name and/or logo on or as part of CNN-IBN does not derogate from the intellectual property rights of Cable News Network in respect of them.