Jaipur Literature Festival

The Jaipur Literature Festival is an annual literary fest organized in the capital city of Rajasthan. The fest is a celebration of local Rajasthani writing and Indian and foreign work of literature.

It is held for a period of four days in the month of January every year.

Legends behind the Jaipur Literature Festival

This literary fest was inaugurated in the year 2006. In a span of only seven years, the Jaipur Literature Festival has culminated into the biggest celebration of works of literature in Asia. An article in the Mail by Miranda Seymour applauds this festival as the grandest literary fest in the world. The festival was inaugurated by the Jaipur Virasat Foundation under Faith Singh. The first episode of the literary fest held in the year 2006 was a small part of the Jaipur Heritage International Festival. It was two years later in the year 2008 that the Jaipur Literature Festival acquired its independent status.

The directors of the festival are world renowned authors William Dalrymple and Namita Gokhale. The last edition of the festival held in January 2012 was the most successful with respect to the strength of international media attention.

Customs, Traditions and Cultural Importance of the Jaipur Literature Festival

The venue of the Jaipur Literature Festival every year is the Diggi Palace Hotel situated in the Rajasthan capital. The gardens of this grand hotel and the Hall of Audience, one of the most prominent rooms of this hotel, are reserved for hosting the Jaipur Literature Festival in the month of January each year.
While the first edition of the festival was only to make the general people aware of the prominent literary achievements in the state and country, it was from 2008 that cultural performances, especially in music, also became an integral part of the festival.

The first edition of the Jaipur Literature Festival saw an attendance of only a handful of 100 people; the number has surpassed the 30,000 mark in its last edition of 2012. The 2012 Jaipur Literature Festival was the most popular because the attendees belonged not only to the writer class but also comprised tourists visiting the state for purpose of travel.

Notable Personalities who visited Jaipur Literature Festival

The names of the most popular writers having attended the Jaipur Literature Festival over a span of the last seven years are listed below:

• Shobhaa De
• Kiran Desai
• Orhan Pamuk
• Prasoon Joshi
• Suketu Mehta
• Paul Zacharia
• Christopher Hampton
• Vikram Seth
• John Berendt

Besides, there were international performers like Anoushka Shankar, Paban Das Baul, Karsh Kale and Susheela Raman.