The Bangalore Literature Festival is back with an array of events aimed at all kinds of readers, from the casual to the intellectual, with three stages dedicated to children’s literature and literary events.
The festival will be held on November 9 and 10 and will open with Pankaj Kapur speaking about his novella ‘Dopehri’, which was in the making for 27 years.
The events will begin at 10 am and go on till late in the evening. There will be three parallel sessions with daylong events, with two of the stages — ‘Tughlaq’ and ‘Yayati’ — named after the works of Girish Karnad. The first day of the festival will see actor B Jayashree, writers Jayant Kaikini, K Marulasiddappa and Preethi Nagaraj remembering and paying tributes to the renowned playwright.
The three stages for children will have nearly 100 events on both days. The nine interactive installations at the festival offer a whole range of experience to the young and old alike.
Kafka lovers can enter the world of Gregor Samsa in a virtual reality installation of ‘The Metamorphosis’ by Goethe-Institute/Max Mueller Bhavan. Another installation allows children to approach the periodic table through interactive games. Unlike the last two years, the festival has less number of events focused directly on politics. However, some of the major issues of the day seem to be covered at discussions like the ‘Ailing Economy’, ‘The remains of liberalism’, ‘Indian Electons’ and ‘The Indian conservative’.
A fair amount of time has been allotted to the other side too, with discussions on Savarkar, Sunanda Pushkar and others.
Urban evengelist V Ravichandar, one of the organisers, noted that the festival is completely a community-funded event. “None of this could have happened without the contributions of the community who came together as friends of BLF,” he said.
