panning over three days, this year’s Lahore Literary Festival (LLF) was a well-curated mix of educative and entertaining sessions, each one hour long. The Alhamra Arts Council on The Mall, made for a perfect venue. Steeped in culture and history, Alhamra provided enough space for holding at least five one sessions simultaneously. The choice was dizzying.

The LLF paid tribute to literature and the literati with nuanced flair and respectful decorum. The sessions were educative, exciting and a delight to sit through. In several cases, the one-hour time cap left the audience wanting more as the subjects under discussion were stimulating to say the least.

From several South-Asian authors to a Nobel laureate, Booker Prize winners and nominees for other prestigious honours in literature to educators, the sheer number of the 21st-Century literati gathered under one roof was astounding. Most of the speakers and panellists were a mix of great writers who are integral to the manner in which fiction, non-fiction, Diasporic and post-colonial writings enrich English and Urdu language and literature.

Writers arrived from all over. A real cosmopolitan affair, the three-day festival was an ode to writings of the past and the present that continue to resonate with the book-buffs everywhere.

On the opening day, educators Navid Shehzad, Perin Cooper, and Shaista Sirajuddin paid a rich tribute to the author of Meatless Days, Sara Suleri-Goodyear (1953-2022), in a session moderated by author-translator Nasreen Rehman. “Sara was born into a world of words,” said Shehzad remembering the late writer. Suleri-Goodyear’s Meatless Days has been described as a “finely wrought memoir of life in post-colonial Pakistan.”

“It is important to emphasise Sara’s position in the pantheon of writers we call post-colonial,” added Shehzad. Shehzad said that there was “a pre-Sara Suleri period in post-colonial women’s writing and a post-Suleri period.” Sirjuddin, who had taught Suleri in her youth, said, “her language was brilliant. She knew her texts very well.” Though Shaista Sirajuddin found earlier writings of the novelist insipid, she believes that “flowering came much later,” which led to one of the most intensely aware pieces of writing, a dazzlingly fluid memoir by the erudite writer in the form of Meatless Days.

The next session cemented LLF’s commitment to celebrating the old and the new. The most voluminous epic poem to emerge from Persia, Abolqasem Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, was discussed at length by three panellists, Dr Nadhra Shahbaz Khan, Syed Nomanul Haq and Shariq Khan. Each examined the intricacies of the epic through their unique lens. Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings consists of over 50,000 rhyming couplets. And because of its extremely graphic nature has been extensively illustrated. Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp (1524-1576) is arguably the most vividly illustrated copy of Ferdowsi’s poem. Some of the illustrations have survived and continue to be showcased at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The audience watched in awe as Dr Nadhra Shahbaz Khan showed the illustrations on slides. The complexity and craft were breathtaking. The exquisite quality of the illustrations prepared in an atelier in Tabriz centuries ago had everyone in the hall transfixed. The mythical stories and characters of Shahnameh came to life on screen in the form of miniatures.

The festival provided every literature enthusiast with a chance to listen to and engage with poets, writers, historians and other literati.

Shahnameh is seen by some to have preserved the Persian language and linguistic tradition. As the name suggests, it is a book about kings, mythical creatures and saviours. It is an epic of love and war, good’s triumph over evil, royal manipulators and mighty soldiers. It is also one of the few pieces of literature whose influence is limitless. From Western literature to the dastaan of the East, Shahnameh’s impact is truly gigantic. Due to its graphic nature, it has been a favourite in the storytelling tradition. An entire scene contained in a couplet with spellbinding rhythmic beauty is the strength of Ferdowsi’s poetry.

While on the topic of poetry, the next session, early morning on the festival’s second day, was dedicated to Ghalib. The panel concluded that Ghalib should not be read only for entertainment’s sake as he was a philosopher disguised as a poet, rivalling Greecian giants and modern Western thinkers. The difference is that perhaps Ghalib himself was unaware of his philosophical greatness, argued the panellists Hijaz Naqvi, Anjum Altaf and Faisal Siddiqi. Ghalib raises questions through his verses but never answers; he leaves the reader in the middle (a limbo), said Faisal Siddiqi, whose recitation of many of Ghalib’s verses made the audience applaud with joy.

The next panel was dedicated to a discussion of literary translation, which can help readers appreciate literature from the furthest corners of the world by making it accessible to them in a language they can understand. Moderated by writer-translator Musharraf Ali Farooqi, the panel included American Booker Prize (for Tomb of Sand) winning translator Daisy Rockwell, Nasreen Rehman, who has translated Manto’s short stories into English, Punjabi writer and translator Sarwat Mohiuddin, and the Lahore-based writer-translator Bilal Tanweer. Farooqi inquired of the panellists, “How do you choose a work? What facets of it interest you? Language, narrative, characters, what entices you?” To this, Rockwell replied, “I have to fall in love with a book first. Translation starts in your head – if a book begins to rattle in my head, I can take it on.”

Mohiuddin said satisfying good writing (poetry) interests her. Rehman seconded Rockwell. Tanweer said he looked for texts with a “voice and humour”.

Taking on a translation venture is no mean feat, especially in South Asia. A significant pay disparity makes the translators’ jobs less than lucrative. Usually, an intriguing text and uncanny dedication to their craft are the translator’s sustenance. The panellists discussed the challenges they face translating text from one language to another as the literary idiom changes with each language. They shed light on their experiences having worked with emotionally draining and mentally stimulating texts – stories that are easy to translate and those that take a long time. The session concluded with the audience gaining a valuable understanding and appreciation of translators’ work.

With ten-minute breaks between them, the session continued till 6pm each evening. Several book launches had readers rejoice. Diana Darke’s The Ottomons: A Cultural Legacy was launched in a session titled Ottoman Aesthetics. In a conversation with FS Aijazuddin, Darke said, “in Europe, we have a bleak image of the Ottomans. I chose to focus on the beginning and not the last years of the empire, marked with bloodshed.” Darke shed light on the earlier years of the Ottoman empire. She talked extensively about the earliest rulers and the fact that they were supported by women – their wives and mothers were very much at the forefront. The Ottoman aesthetics were discussed at length. From architecture to art, religion to spirituality, calligraphy to cartography, seminal contributions of the Ottoman were discussed, and their lifestyle analysed. Aijazadduin summed up the strength of the early Ottoman empire, as noted by Darke in her book, in three points. What set them (the Ottomans) apart were: “1) readiness to foster tolerance, 2) readiness to take in refugees, 3) religious and ethnic openness.”

The LLF provided every literature enthusiast with a chance to listen to and engage with poets, writers, historians and other literati in effective ways.

The writer is a staff member