Jaipur Literature Festival announces first list of 25 speakers

The annual Jaipur Literature Festival announced its much-awaited first list of speakers for its 13th edition, which will take place from 23-27 January at the historic Diggi Palace Hotel in Jaipur.

The first list of 25 speakers released includes Anand Neelakantan, author, columnist, screenwriter, television personality and motivational speaker, who has signed a three-book series deal with the producers of the blockbuster film Baahubali; Anosh Irani, the author of The Bombay Plays: The Matka King & Bombay Black, who was a finalist for the Canadian Governor General's Literary Award for Drama; Asma Khan, the first British chef to feature in Netflix's Emmy-nominated Chef's Table; Ben Judah, the author of Fragile Empire, the Financial Times Summer Book of 2013; Brian Aivars Catlos, author of four scholarly books, including most recently Kingdoms of Faith: A New History of Islamic Spain.

The list continues with Chitra Mudgal, the first Indian woman to receive the Vyas Samman for her acclaimed novel Avaan; Frank Dikötter, author of a dozen books on modern China, including Mao's Great Famine, winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction in 2011; Hallie Rubenhold, bestselling author whose latest book The Five, has been longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize and shortlisted for the Crime Writer's Association Gold Dagger; Howard Jacobson, recipient of the 2010 Man Booker Prize for his book The Finkler Question; Jung Chang, author of the bestselling books Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, Mao: The Unknown Story (with Jon Halliday) and Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China; Keki N. Daruwalla, winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award; Kent Nerburn, widely known for his insights into Native American culture, whose trilogy Neither Wolf nor Dog, The Wolf at Twilight and The Girl Who Sang to the Buffalo are core works in multicultural curricula throughout the world; KR Meera, winner of the Kendra and Kerala Sahitya Akademi awards whose novel Aaraachaar has sold around 150,000 copies and its translation, Hangwoman, shortlisted for the DSC Prize.

They are joined by Kunal Basu, the author of The Japanese Wife, the lead story of which was made into an award-winning film; Maaza Mengiste, author of Beneath the Lion's Gaze, selected by The Guardian as one of the 10 best contemporary African books; Marcus du Sautoy, author of six books, including the recent The Creativity Code and a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford; Mishi Saran, author of The Other Side of Light, who shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize; Nilanjana S Roy, author of the award-winning fantasy novel The Wildings; and Om Swami, the brain behind the fastest-growing meditation and kindness movement in the world, Black Lotus.

There's also Raj Kamal Jha, award-winning journalist, internationally-acclaimed for his novels which have been translated into more than a dozen languages; Sara Rai, author of Im Labyrinth which won the Coburg Rückert Prize 2019 for its German translation by Johanna Hahn; Stephen Greenblatt, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize; Shubha Mudgal, veteran Hindustani vocalist, who has written a collection of short stories which revolve around the music that has nurtured her; Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, which won the Kiriyama Prize and the Hutch Crossword Award, and a 2005 Pulitzer finalist; Vishal Bhardwaj, acclaimed film director, writer, composer and producer, who published his first book of poems titled Nude in 2018.