THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
nationthailand

Literary titans gather

Literary titans gather

Myanmar to host Irrawaddy Literary Festival in Mandalay

International writers will join local authors in Mandalay for the second Irrawaddy Literary Festival next month.
Organised by the British Ambassador’s wife, Jane Heyn, and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the inaugural festival was |held in Yangon last February. Jane Heyn is also organising this year’s festival.
The festival will be held from February 14 to 16 at Kuthodaw Pagoda, which is home to the world’s largest book. More than 20 international authors, 30 authors from Yangon and 60 authors from Mandalay will participate in literary talks and workshops at this year’s literary festival.
There will also be food and enter tainment for festival participants. The entertainment program will include puppet shows and performances of Myanmar traditional harp and xylophone, traditional dance and Chinlone.
Some of the internationally renowned writers to grace the Irrawaddy Literary Festival include:

LOUIS DE BERNIERES
Louis de Bernieres graduated in Philosophy from the Victoria University of Manchester, followed by a postgraduate in Education at Leicester Polytechnic, and an |MA, with distinction, at the University of London. Over the course of his career he has held |various jobs, including landscape gardener, mechanic, officer |cadet at Sandhurst, and a school teacher in Colombia and England.
His first novel, “The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts”, was pub lished in 1990. He won the Commonwealth Writers Prize, Best First Book Eurasia Region, in 1991, and was selected by Granta magazine as one of the 20 Best of Young British
Novelists in 1993. Since then he has become well known internationally as a writer. His second book, “Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord”, which won the Common-wealth Writers Prize, Best Book Eurasia Region, and his third |book, “The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman”, were influenced by de Bernires’ experiences in Colombia, and together make up his ‘Latin American trilogy’. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (1994), won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Novel. His sixth novel,
“Birds Without Wings”, came out in 2004. “A Partisan’s Daughter” (2008), was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award, and “Notwithstanding: Stories From an English Village”, was published in 2009. His first collection of poetry, “Imagining Alexandria:
Poems in Memory of Constantinos Cavafis”, was published in book and audio form (read by the author) in 2013. As well as writing, he plays the flute, mandolin, clarinet and guitar, and is working on a new novel.

SUDHA SHAH
Sudha Shah was schooled in Mumbai and thereafter was awarded a degree in economics from Smith College, USA. She spent seven years researching and writing “The King in Exile: The Fall of the Royal Family of Burma”, a biography of the last king of Burma, King Thibaw, and his family. The book was shortlisted for the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2012 and for the Tata Literature Live First Book Award 2012. Burmese, Thai, and Marathi translations are currently in progress.

MICHAEL VATIKIOTIS
Michael Vatikiotis has worked as a writer and journalist in Southeast Asia for the past 25 years. After training as a journalist with the BBC in London, he moved to Southeast Asia and was a correspondent, and then chief editor, of the Far Eastern Economic Review. He has written two novels set in Indonesia, and two collections of short stories set in Southeast Asia. He is a frequent contributor to the opinion pages of regional and international publications.
He currently works as a mediator in armed conflict as the Asia Regional Director of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue and lives in Singapore.

UNG CHANG
Jung Chang is the best-selling author of “Wild Swans” (1991), which the Asian Wall Street Journal called the most read book about China, and Mao: “The Unknown Story” (2005), with Jon Halliday, which was described by Time Magazine as ‘an atom bomb of a book’. Her books have been translated into more than 40 languages and sold more than 15 million copies out side mainland China, where they are both banned. She was born in China in 1952, and came to Britain in 1978. She lives in London.
 

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