Jaipur Bytes

The award-winning Vidya Balan and author and screenplay writer Nayanika Mahtani discuss their latest film on the mathematical genius, the late Shakuntala Devi. In conversation Vani Tripathi Tikoo. This episode is the audio version of a live online session from #JLFLondonAtBL2020.

This episode is the audio version of a live online session from #JLFLondonAtBL2020. Bernardine Evaristo’s 2019 Man Booker Prize-winning ‘Girl, Woman, Other’ follows the journey of an interconnected group of 12 black women in a quest for love, hope and home spanning across the legacy of contemporary and colonial Britain. In conversation with writer Anjum Hasan, she discusses the idea of womxnhood, culture, class, politics and race coursing through her iconic writings.

A live session from #JaipurLitFest2020. Elizabeth Gilbert, Leila Slimani, Avni Doshi, John Lanchester and Howard Jacobson in conversation with Damian Barr.

A live session from #JaipurLitFest2020. Travel writing is one of the most ancient forms of literature but does it have any relevance in the age of the internet, globalisation and Google Maps? Travel writers Katie Hickman, Elizabeth Gilbert, Peter Hessler, Howard Jacobson and Suketu Mehta discuss the genre and read from their work with William Dalrymple.

A live session from #JaipurLitFest2020. Writer and TIME editor-at-large Anand Giridharadas takes on the privileged classes in his scorching new book, the bestselling Winners Take All. It investigates the global elite’s efforts to ‘change the world’ except in ways that threaten the social order and their position atop it. This searing critique of modern plutocrats who seek to do more good but never less harm is described as a call to action for elites and everyday citizens alike. A session that offers transformative perspectives to complex societal problems. In conversation with Åsne Seierstad.

A live session from #JaipurLitFest2020. How does one capture the life of a woman in writing? How different is the feminine biography from that of a man? Biographers Bettany Hughes, Benjamin Moser, Jung Chang, Lindsey Hilsum and Hallie Rubenhold discuss the difficulty of pinning to paper the lives of women to paper in conversation with Anita Anand.

A live session from #JaipurLitFest2020. China’s mammoth Belt and Road initiative, straddling almost 70 countries, is an infrastructure project of staggering complexity. Alongside writers and diplomats Manoj Joshi, Shyam Saran, Sujeev Shakya and Bruno Maçães, a Portugese politician, former Minister of European Affairs and author of Belt and Road: A Chinese World Order, discusses its ambitions and implications as it tracks new trade and energy routes, with particular emphasis on its feasibility and implications in India and South Asia.

A live session from #JaipurLitFest2020. Throughout history, artists and scientists have been bound together by a complex thread born out of the desire to experiment, taking inspiration from each other’s disciplines but working from very different perspectives. This session, featuring Tilly Blyth, Head of Collections and Principal Curator at the Science Museum in London and the author of the edifying book The Art of Innovation: From Enlightenment to Dark Matter, and Payal Arora, Professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam and award-winning author of several books, including The Next Billion Users, discusses how the ingenuity of science and technology has fed the artistic imagination and affected innovation. The authors will be in conversation with author and academic Tarun Khanna, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at the Harvard Business School.

Three major Indian poets discuss the poetic imagination, searching its sources, inspirations and philosophy. Eminent English poet and translator Arvind Krishna Mehrotra speaks of his influences, among which he acknowledges William Carlos Williams and the Beat poets, as well as Kabir. Iconic Hindi poet and critic Ashok Vajpeyi has nurtured and founded many cultural institutions. Much awarded English poet, cultural theorist and curator Ranjit Hoskote is the author of the recent Jonahwhale as well as the acclaimed translation of the Kashmiri poet Lal Ded. In conversation with award-winning British poet and scholar Ruth Padel, they read from and discuss the contexts of their work as well as the wider canvas of poetics and aesthetic theories.

A live session from #JaipurLitFest2020. The wizarding world of Harry Potter isn’t just about magic versus muggles. It has a dizzying array of scientific theory, metaphysics and connections between complex natural phenomena. Roger Highfield, author of The Science of Harry Potter, explores the fascinating links between magic and science, and shows how the fantastical conceits in the Potter books can actually be explained by scientific analysis. This session will be a delightful journey through stories of science that define a fictional series considered one of the 20th century’s most definitive cult classics. Highfield will be in conversation with writer and editor Keshava Guha, whose novel Accidental Magic is set in Boston of the early 2000s in a community of adult Harry Potter obsessives.