Karachi Literature Festival goes to London

To celebrate 70 years of Pakistan’s independence, Pakistan’s biggest literary event, the Karachi Literature Festival (KLF), pioneered by the Oxford University Press (Pakistan), travels to London, where it will be held at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, on May 20, 2017.

This was announced by Ameena Saiyid, managing director, Oxford University Press (OUP), Pakistan, at the UK Deputy High Commission on Thursday evening.

She said that with its unparalleled creative culture and diverse communities, London was the ideal place for the KLF to launch itself outside Pakistan.

The event, Saiyid said, would be an ideal opportunity for London’s South Asian population to acquaint themselves with the region’s rich culture and history.

The venture, she said, was to showcase Pakistan’s immense talent in the field of literature and creativity and to erase to as much an extent as possible the bad press that Pakistan had received in parts of the world, as a source of terrorism, bomb blasts and wanton bloodshed. “We would also like the world to be fully acquainted with the positive aspects of the country,” she said.

The programme would, by and large, comprise talks, interviews, panel discussions, Mushaira, children’s strand and all others that annually take place at the Karachi festival.  

She said that Shahbano Bilgrami would be coming over from the US. Politician of Pakistani origin Baroness Warsi would be discussing her book, “A tale of Muslim Britain: the enemy within”.

There would be Partition stories featuring Nimra Bucha, Vayu Naidu, Sarah Ansari, Kamran Asjad Ali and others.

Noted vocalist Khalid Anum will be there for the children’s section.

Providing comparative statistics, she said that while in the maiden KLF in 2010, visitors numbered 5,000, at the 2017 KLF, there were 200,000 of them.

Bestselling author and journalist Muhammad Hanif is to be the keynote speaker at the London festival.

Among others speakers will be Claire Chambers, Faris Kermani, Fifi Haroon, Shayma Saiyid, Sherry Rehman, Victoria Schofield, Shuja Nawaz, Mukilika Bannerjee and Zehra Nigah.