Source: Vogue
The virtual iteration of the event will see a host of prominent speakers and a slew of exciting awards
A carnival for bibliophiles and writers alike, the prestigious Tata Literature Live! Mumbai Litfest is back for its twelfth edition with a smashing line-up and an extravagant melange of events including panel discussions and workshops. The three-day literary gala, beginning from 18th to 21st November, will be held virtually without a fee for the second year in a row and anybody can join in from wherever and whenever to take a plunge into the world of literature, arts and culture. Amy Fernandes, director of the festival, said, “Despite the enormous challenges of the past 18 months, we have been able to maintain an unbroken series to announce [its] 12th avatar this year. This Litfest will be a poignant event for us, our associates, and our regular audiences, who will miss Anil Dharker and Shashi Baliga, but it will also be a matter of pride to mount a festival that will meet the exceptional standards that they set”.
Highlights
An amalgamation of literature, poetry, philosophy, business, science and the arts, the splendid assortment of speakers, comprising stalwarts like Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, Steven Pinker, Indira Nooyi, Neena Gupta and Shashi Tharoor, will impart words of wisdom and delve into significant literary discourses. Like every year, the Book of the Year in Fiction and Non-fiction categories, Business Book of the Year and Publisher of the Year will be announced and the tradition of the Great Debate will continue to nudge the viewers to introspect on their leanings and allegiances. For the first time, there will also be an Introduction to Indian Languages with sessions on Marathi prose and poetry. The exciting Little Festival for children and the effervescent Campus Festival especially curated for college students will run simultaneously.
Anita Desai will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award
The distinguished author of monumental books like In Custody, Clear Light of the Day, Fire on the Mountain and Baumgartner’s Bombay, Anita Desai will be awarded the Tata Literature! Lifetime Achievement Award for 2021. The thrice Booker-shortlisted writer has constantly probed the fabric of Indian society fraying at the edges and engaged with themes like loneliness, the vulnerable nature of human relationships and the violent impact of social structures on the individual through her beguiling prose over the course of her mammoth literary career. Responding to the news of the award, Desai said “An award given for a lifetime’s work is a great honour and I am deeply grateful to Tata Literature Live! for conferring it on me. I was convinced that I and my work belong to a distant past and my presence here is the presence of a ghost! To find one’s books are still read and remembered in such a changed world fills me with both amazement and gratitude.”
This year’s Poet Laureate is Adil Jussawala
With his poems immortalised in collections like Land’s End, Missing Person and Trying to Say Goodbye, the illustrious Indian Poet Adil Jussawala will be the Poet Laureate of the Festival. His layered and profound poetry primarily chronicles the nature of the city landscape, exploring both its beauty and its bleak side, surveying belongingness and alienation and questioning its capacity to both nurture and render one lifeless. Accepting the Poet Laureateship, Jussawala said, “Poetry is the oldest, most quintessential, and often most accessible form of human literary expression, and I am pleased to know that the Mumbai Litfest gives its practitioners a well-respected platform every year.”
