The 2016 Jaipur Literature Festival will host a great many illustrious literary figures from India and around the world. These include Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, English comedian, actor and writer Stephen Fry, novelists Anuradha Roy and Anjum Hasan, Hindi poet and critic Ashok Vajpeyi, transgender activist and memoirist Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, economist Thomas Piketty and theorist, philosopher and writer Kwame Anthony Appiah – among many others. Here are eight of the other speakers we're excited about seeing in January 2016.
Abdourahman A Waberi
Waberi writes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. He was born in Djibouti, and moved to France to study English Literature at the age of 20. His work has been translated into over ten languages; four of his books are available in English. Of these, the latest, Passage Of Tears, has been published by Seagull Books in India and the UK, and concerns a young Djiboutian named Djibril, based in Canada, who returns to Djibouti on an assignment to prepare a report for an American company. Waberi has been awarded the Grand prix littéraire d'Afrique noire, among other honours.
Ruby Hembrom
Hembrom is the founding director of adivaani, a Kolkata-based publishing house dedicated to narratives for and by adivasi people. While enrolled on a course, Hembrom noticed the severe underrepresentation of adivasi authors in contemporary publishing. She subsequently founded adivaani, where she is also an author, with two friends, Joy Tudu, and Luis A Gómes. Hembrom is the author of two Santhal creation stories titled We Come from the Geese and Earth Rests on a Tortoise. With Saheb Ram Tudu, she has written Disaibon Hul, an illustrated book on the 1855-57 Santhal rebellion.
Yoko Tawada
Born in Tokyo, Tawada moved to Germany when she was 22. She writes in both Japanese and German, and several of her novels have been published in English by New Directions. Her works embrace what a New Yorker profile calls “magnificent strangeness”; in one novel, a schoolteacher meets a doglike man who resembles the dog in a story she tells her pupils, and in another, a Vietnamese high school student lost in Paris becomes engrossed in the films of Catherine Deneuve. Tawada is the recipient of the Gunzo Literature Prize, the Lessing Prize, and the Izumi Kyoka Prize for Literature, among other awards.
Alberto Ruy Sánchez
The Mexican novelist, poet, and essayist is the founding editor of the magazine Artes de Mexico. Most of his novels are set in Mogador, an ancient name for the Moroccan city Essaouira. In a statement on his website, he challenges reductive questioning about a Mexican author writing about a Moroccan city, which he says is "...a narrow way of regarding a writer’s place in the world, especially one who comes from another third world country. (...) I claim for myself and others the right to be a citizen of all the places of my choice." He has been named Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France, and has received the Gran Orden de Honor Nacional al Mérito Autoral in Mexico.
Marlon James
The author of three novels, James became the first ever Jamaican to win the Man Booker Prize, which he was awarded this year. Born in Kingston, he has been teaching English and creative writing in Minnesota since 2007. James almost gave up writing after his debut novel, John Crow's Devil, was rejected 78 times. A Brief History of Seven Killings, the novel for which he was awarded the prize, concerns a fictional account of the attempted assassination of Bob Marley in 1976.
Reema Abbasi
Abbasi is a Pakistani writer and journalist. She is the author of Historic Temples in Pakistan: A Call to Conscience, a study that explores the pluralistic heritage of Pakistan and the shared history of Pakistan and India. The book contains over 400 photographs, and involved travel to over 40 sites across Pakistan. Her journalistic work is known for its focus on secularism. She is the recipient of the UNESCO Islamabad Gender in Journalism award, and of a Fulbright award for photography.
Sergio Ramírez Mercado
The Nicaraguan writer and politician served as a leader of the Group of Twelve, a political collective supporting the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSNL) against the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. Mercado served as the Vice President of Nicaragua under President Daniel Ortega, and later formed Movimiento de Renovación Sandinista, following differences with FSLN leaders, including Ortega. In 1996, he retired from politics after failing to win the presidential elections, and has since focussed on his writing.
Daša Drndić
A Croatian novelist, playwright, and literary critic, Drndić has taught in Croatia and Canada, edited books for a publishing house, and worked for the radio in Belgrade. She has published extensively in Croatian; Trieste is the first of her novels to have been translated into English. It has been praised for its combination of historical record and fiction to tell a powerful story of the Holocaust; its style has been compared to the work of WG Sebald.
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Abdourahman A Waberi
Waberi writes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. He was born in Djibouti, and moved to France to study English Literature at the age of 20. His work has been translated into over ten languages; four of his books are available in English. Of these, the latest, Passage Of Tears, has been published by Seagull Books in India and the UK, and concerns a young Djiboutian named Djibril, based in Canada, who returns to Djibouti on an assignment to prepare a report for an American company. Waberi has been awarded the Grand prix littéraire d'Afrique noire, among other honours.
Ruby Hembrom
Hembrom is the founding director of adivaani, a Kolkata-based publishing house dedicated to narratives for and by adivasi people. While enrolled on a course, Hembrom noticed the severe underrepresentation of adivasi authors in contemporary publishing. She subsequently founded adivaani, where she is also an author, with two friends, Joy Tudu, and Luis A Gómes. Hembrom is the author of two Santhal creation stories titled We Come from the Geese and Earth Rests on a Tortoise. With Saheb Ram Tudu, she has written Disaibon Hul, an illustrated book on the 1855-57 Santhal rebellion.
Yoko Tawada
Born in Tokyo, Tawada moved to Germany when she was 22. She writes in both Japanese and German, and several of her novels have been published in English by New Directions. Her works embrace what a New Yorker profile calls “magnificent strangeness”; in one novel, a schoolteacher meets a doglike man who resembles the dog in a story she tells her pupils, and in another, a Vietnamese high school student lost in Paris becomes engrossed in the films of Catherine Deneuve. Tawada is the recipient of the Gunzo Literature Prize, the Lessing Prize, and the Izumi Kyoka Prize for Literature, among other awards.
Alberto Ruy Sánchez
The Mexican novelist, poet, and essayist is the founding editor of the magazine Artes de Mexico. Most of his novels are set in Mogador, an ancient name for the Moroccan city Essaouira. In a statement on his website, he challenges reductive questioning about a Mexican author writing about a Moroccan city, which he says is "...a narrow way of regarding a writer’s place in the world, especially one who comes from another third world country. (...) I claim for myself and others the right to be a citizen of all the places of my choice." He has been named Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France, and has received the Gran Orden de Honor Nacional al Mérito Autoral in Mexico.
Marlon James
The author of three novels, James became the first ever Jamaican to win the Man Booker Prize, which he was awarded this year. Born in Kingston, he has been teaching English and creative writing in Minnesota since 2007. James almost gave up writing after his debut novel, John Crow's Devil, was rejected 78 times. A Brief History of Seven Killings, the novel for which he was awarded the prize, concerns a fictional account of the attempted assassination of Bob Marley in 1976.
Reema Abbasi
Abbasi is a Pakistani writer and journalist. She is the author of Historic Temples in Pakistan: A Call to Conscience, a study that explores the pluralistic heritage of Pakistan and the shared history of Pakistan and India. The book contains over 400 photographs, and involved travel to over 40 sites across Pakistan. Her journalistic work is known for its focus on secularism. She is the recipient of the UNESCO Islamabad Gender in Journalism award, and of a Fulbright award for photography.
Sergio Ramírez Mercado
The Nicaraguan writer and politician served as a leader of the Group of Twelve, a political collective supporting the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSNL) against the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. Mercado served as the Vice President of Nicaragua under President Daniel Ortega, and later formed Movimiento de Renovación Sandinista, following differences with FSLN leaders, including Ortega. In 1996, he retired from politics after failing to win the presidential elections, and has since focussed on his writing.
Daša Drndić
A Croatian novelist, playwright, and literary critic, Drndić has taught in Croatia and Canada, edited books for a publishing house, and worked for the radio in Belgrade. She has published extensively in Croatian; Trieste is the first of her novels to have been translated into English. It has been praised for its combination of historical record and fiction to tell a powerful story of the Holocaust; its style has been compared to the work of WG Sebald.