Not much has happened in Kerala’s cultural sphere since the coronavirus pressed the pause button on the world a year and a half ago.
But, things are slowly getting back to normalcy and next month will see the Kerala Literary Festival, one of the biggest events in the State’s cultural calendar, making a return to the physical world. The sixth edition of the KLF will be held here from January 20 to 23.
“We are happy that we are conducting the KLF once again,” Ravi Deecee, the festival’s chief facilitator, told The Hindu on Thursday. “Though we organised an online KLF this year – and it was well-received too – we the organisers missed the real thing.”
So did the book-loving people of Malabar, and beyond, too – if the number of registrations is anything to go by.
“More than 8,000 people have registered during the last one week,” said Ravi. “The KLF has gained a reputation as one of India’s most important literature festivals and we didn’t want to lose the momentum we have built. That is why we decided to conduct it this year, despite the challenges posed by COVID-19.”
As in previous years, this year too will feature a long, strong line-up of speakers from across the world. Jeffrey Archer, Wendy Doniger and Chris Kraus are among the biggest attractions.
About 400 speakers will take part in some 200 sessions. They include Ada Yonath, Abhijit Banerjee, Arundhati Roy, Remo Fernandes, Sagarika Ghose, Shashi Tharoor, Manu S. Pillai, Devdutt Pattanaik and Sudhir Kakar.
They could be sure of one thing: there will be excellent audiences to listen to them at the Kozhikode beach. All the previous editions of the KLF had attracted big crowds.
