Kerala Literature Fest from Thursday

Nobel laureates, booker prize winners to be speakers

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan will inaugurate the 6th edition of the Kerala Literature Festival on Kozhikode beach at 5.30 p.m. on Thursday.

Chief facilitator of the festival Ravi Dee Cee told reporters here on Tuesday that the festival that is being held after a two-year pandemic-induced break, would feature discussions on literature and beyond, with the participation of around 500 speakers in 248 events.

The festival is being held at six venues spread across the north beach from Lions Park to Freedom Square, that have been titled Thoolika, Mango, Ezhuthola, Aksharam, Vakku, and Katha in the respective order. Speakers from 12 countries, including Nobel laureates, Booker Prize winners, senior politicians, historians, journalists, film and theatre personalities, performers, artists, diplomats, and literary luminaries are attending the festival.

The final list of speakers includes Tamil Nadu Finance Minister Palanivel Thiagarajan, Booker Prize winners Shehan Karunatilaka and Arundhati Roy, International Booker Prize winner Geetanjali Shree, Nobel laureates Ada Yonath and Abhijit Banerjee, American Indologist Wendy Doniger, actor/politician Kamal Haasan, advertisement guru Piyush Pandey, Japanese writer Yōko Ogawa, journalists P. Sainath, Sagarika Ghose, and Barkha Dutt, historians Ramachandra Guha, William Darymple, Yuval Noah Harari, and Manu S. Pillai, pop singers Remo Fernandes and Usha Uthup, actor Prakash Raj, politician Kapil Sibal, Monk Gaur Gopal Das, entrepreneur Kris Gopalakrishnan and economist Sanjeev Sanyal, besides authors Jeffrey Archer, Francesc Miralles, Shobhaa De, Tushar Gandhi, M.T. Vasudevan Nair, M. Mukundan, K.R. Meera, T. Padmanabhan, Jerry Pinto, Shashi Tharoor, Aanchal Malhotra, Benyamin, and Sudha Murthy.

Mr. Ravi Dee Cee said the discussions would feature all important books published in the last three years from prominent publishers in Malayalam and English. Kannada is the Indian language in focus this year. Movies will be screened on the beach as part of the festival.

Former MLA A. Pradeep Kumar, chairman of the organising committee, said the festival would be held in line with the green protocol, and that the literature festival played a major role in obtaining UNESCO’s ‘Literature City’ status for Kozhikode.