Beginning and Endings!

The momentum of the beginning and the sense of an ending define the circumference of a story. A panel of accomplished writers read from and context beginnings and endings in the structure of their work. This was discussed on the fourth day of the grand JLF 2023 where Chuden Kabimo, Sheela Tomy, Manoranjan Byapari and Arunava Sinha. Moderated by Literary Director Mita Kapur, the session shed light on the beginnings and endings of the novels, and the writers’ own thoughts and processes in creating those. While talking about the curation of artefacts at the British Museum, Blurton noted, “Objects are part of the story of man’s life on the planet.” Logan spoke about the significance of private museums in the contemporary age whilst Andrews and Roy discussed the importance and benefits of the collaboration of museums and libraries across the world. Speaking about translations of various works in different languages to English, Andrews said, “So one of the big things we are doing at the moment with partners in India… is working on OCR, Optimal Character Recognition for other scripts, for Indian script, for Urdu, for Bengali, for other Indian scripts, to make sure that this material, once it’s digitised can be easily found.”

Speaking on the occasion, Mita Kapur, Literary Director, The JCB Prize for Literature stated, “The JCB Prize has been associated with the Jaipur Literature Festival for the past five years. The festival provides a substantial platform for the finest of contemporary fiction that India has to offer to a wide spectrum of audiences both nationally and internationally. We are delighted and very proud to present the JCB Prize’s shortlisted authors and translators along with the winner for 2022 at the festival.”

The JCB Prize for Literature celebrates excellence in Indian writing. It is presented each year as a distinguished work of fiction by an Indian writer, as selected by the jury. The Prize encourages translations and aims to introduce new audiences to works of Indian literature written in languages other than their own.