14th Karachi Literature Festival to kick off on Feb 17

The 14th edition of the much-awaited annual literary event of the city — Karachi Literature Festival (KLF) — will start at the Beach Luxury Hotel on February 17 and conclude two days later on February 10.

Speaking at a press conference at the Arts Council of Pakistan on Friday evening, Arshad Saeed Hussain, the managing director (MD) of the Oxford University Press (OUP) Pakistan that has been the organiser of the event since its inception, announced that ‘People, Planet and Possibilities’ would be the theme of the festival this year.

“The biggest challenge Pakistan is facing is the economic situation where we have the highest inflation rate since the 1970s, massive currency devaluation and other issues that affect every person,” he remarked.

He added that we had seen devastating floods in Pakistan last year and a major earthquake in Turkiye this month, bringing forth new challenges. “So we will have a lot of sessions on these issues to discuss how to tackle them and find solutions and possibilities to solve them.”

Hussain maintained that the key focus must be on finding solutions to these challenges and the entire festival was going to revolve around it. “The focus will be on possibilities and try to find solutions through intellectual discourse and debates,” he said.

The OUP MD explained that the event would kick off at 4pm on February 17, Friday, and the keynote speakers at the inauguration ceremony would be Federal Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman and author Noorul Huda Shah.

The inaugural ceremony would be followed by book awards, musical performances and panel discussions. The next two days – Saturday and Sunday – would feature sessions from 11am till 8:30pm.

Hussain said there would be over 200 speakers, including 10 international speakers from eight countries – the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Germany and France — participating in the festival that would feature 60 sessions, including 24 book launches with a mix of both Urdu and English books, poetry readings and screening of a feature film.

He said the highlight of this year’s festival would be the presence of two Booker Prize winning authors – Damon Galgut and Shehan Karunatilaka. The literary figures that would participate in live sessions include Muneeza Shamsie, Tariq Rehman, Yasmeen Hameed, Anwar Maqsood, Moni Mohsin, Hameed Shahid, Zulfiqar Kalhoro, Iftikhar Arif and Kishwar Naheed. There would be discussions on current affairs, education and ed tech, and climate justice with experts such as Rashheedah Watts, Ishrat Husain, Michael Kugelman, Shahnaz Wazir Ali, Jehan Ara, Miftah Ismail, Ikram Sehgal, Nadeem Hussain, Syed Salim Raza, Hamid Khan, Makhdoom Ali Khan and Raza Rabbani. The festival would also include panel discussions featuring showbiz personalities such as Khaled Anam, Bee Gul, Sanam Saeed, Sarwat Gillani and Bilal Maqsood.

Muneeza Shamsie spoke on the occasion that literature played an important role in opening new discussions and throwing insights into our past, present and future. “What I love most about literature is that it touches upon craze, the unspoken and the things that you haven’t thought about and makes you think about them,” she said.

She lauded the KLF and its sponsors for acknowledging literary excellence of writers through awards.

Economist Dr Kaisar Bengali opined that the country faced economic crisis every year but this time it was more severe. At a time when inflation had limited many families’ access to food, the OUP was trying to ensure that we got food for soul, he said, adding that literature, culture, music and dance were important for human beings alongside basic necessities such as food.

Ali Habib, chief marketing and communications officer of the Habib Bank Limited, said the festival was in sync with his organisation’s philosophy of enabling dreams. Amid testing times like these, the KLF was a beacon of hope, he added, vowing to keep encouraging and patronising such events. Former Federal Board of Revenue chairman Shabbar Zaidi, Mujahid Barelvi, Mohammad Mikail Soomro, and Taha Kehar also spoke on the occasion.