Kolkata: The fifth edition of The Valley of Words (VoW), a two-day literary festival, has begun at the Bengal Club in Kolkata on Saturday.
City-based authors from the Hindi fiction and translation categories will share their ideas during the festival. Various new books would be launched at the literary dais.
VoW has organized four literary fests in Dehradun since 2017. This year, VoW has partnered with the Indian Chamber of Commerce for the Kolkata edition.
The fest will be a platform for the city booklovers to venture into a world of books, interact with new and seasoned authors and partake in the debates and discussions.
The discussions would be covering women’s issues, history, art, visions of the future, crime, wildlife, poetry, translations and much more.
The festival will also share virtual link-ins from across India and the globe to enable the city’s participants and audience to interact directly with those who are not physically present. The entire fest will stream live on: https://www.youtube.com/c/ValleyofWordsLitFest.
Shortlisted books in the English fiction category include Lavanya Lakshminarayan's 'Analog/Virtual and Other Simulations of Your Future', Osman Haneef's 'Blasphemy', 'In the Land of Lovers' by Sakoon Singh, Mahek Jangda's 'Sometimes Ivory, Sometimes Sand', and Gautam Bhatia's "The Wall".
'Sixteen Stormy Days' by Tripurdaman Singh, 'Gandhi in the Gallery - The Art of Disobedience' by Sumathi Ramaswamy, Ishtiaq Ahmed's 'Jinnah his successes, failures and role in History', 'A New Idea of India' written by Harsh Madhusudan and Rajeev Mantri, N S Vinodh's 'A Forgotten Ambassador in Cairo' are among the shortlisted books in the non-fiction category.
In addition, Kolkata-based Alka Saraogi will be featured on the platform for her book 'Kulbhushan ka Naam Darj Kijiye' under the Hindi Fiction Category and Ranjita Biswas’s English translation from Assamese, 'The Loneliness of Hira Barua' will be highlighted.
