{"id":13250,"date":"2020-01-25T18:00:50","date_gmt":"2020-01-25T09:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/global-development\/2020\/jan\/25\/books-bollywood-and-barbs-the-magic-of-the-jaipur-literature-festival"},"modified":"2020-01-25T18:00:50","modified_gmt":"2020-01-25T09:00:50","slug":"books-bollywood-and-barbs-the-magic-of-the-jaipur-literature-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=13250","title":{"rendered":"Books, Bollywood and barbs: the magic of the Jaipur literature festival"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Critics may carp, but stellar lineups, celebrity sightings and swarming crowds make Jaipur the world\u2019s biggest literary event<\/p>\n<p>For a country too often associated with poverty and bad news, the annual <a href=\"https:\/\/jaipurliteraturefestival.org\/\">Jaipur <\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/jaipurliteraturefestival.org\/\">literature <\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/jaipurliteraturefestival.org\/\">festival<\/a> is a matter of national pride. Not only because it is officially the world\u2019s largest such gathering, but also because it has earned its place on the global literary map, even with a serious reading public still emerging in India.<\/p>\n<p>Where else in the world could you listen to Weijian Shan, author of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Out-Gobi-Story-China-America-ebook\/dp\/B07MFQPS5Y\">Out of the Gobi<\/a>, recall his childhood during China\u2019s cultural revolution, when Mao urged students to beat their teachers to death? Or learn how the late war correspondent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/media\/2012\/feb\/22\/marie-colvin\">Marie Colvin<\/a> had to drink Colonel Gaddafi\u2019s guards under the table in order to secure an interview with him? Or hear biographer <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/2019\/sep\/08\/susan-sontag-her-life-benjamin-moser-review\">Benjamin Moser<\/a> talk about Susan Sontag\u2019s lifelong shame at being gay?<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/global-development\/2020\/jan\/25\/books-bollywood-and-barbs-the-magic-of-the-jaipur-literature-festival\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Critics may carp, but stellar lineups, celebrity sightings and swarming crowds make Jaipur the world\u2019s biggest literary eventFor a country too often associated with poverty and bad news, the annual Jaipur literature festival is a matter of national pri&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":871,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[511,71,678,59,62,61,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-culture","category-festivals","category-global-development","category-india","category-south-and-central-asia","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/871"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13250"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13251,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13250\/revisions\/13251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}