Login / RegisterIndian Summer festival’s Words on Water brings out stars
The Indian Summer Arts Society, Teamwork Productions, and SFU Woodward’s have come together to create a literary smorgasbord in Vancouver this month. The Indian Summer festival’s Words on Water series features celebrated novelists, journalists, and even an Indian movie star.
On Friday (July 8), author Yann Martel will join Tabu in conversation at the SFU Woodward’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts. Tabu has appeared in more than 70 Bollywood films, but is best known in North America for playing the mother in Mira Nair’s The Namesake, which was based on the novel by Jhumpa Lahiri. Martel won the 2002 Booker Prize for his novel Life of Pi, which is set in the southern Indian city of Pondicherry (the former French colony that now goes by the name of Puducherry). Tabu has been cast in the film version of Life of Pi, directed by Ang Lee. Tabu and Martel will discuss their work, including Martel’s most recent novel Beatrice & Virgil, as well as the challenges of adapting books into movies. Following the discussion will be a screening of The Namesake.
Next Thursday (July 14), there are two events scheduled. At 6 p.m. in the Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre at SFU Woodward’s, authors Hari Kunzru and Anosh Irani will read from their novels and discuss the writing process. Kunzru, a New York City resident and British Book Award winner, has written The Impressionist, Transmission, and My Revolutions. Irani, an Indian immigrant to Vancouver, has written three novels and was nominated for the Governor General’s Award for Drama. Not many Vancouverites know that he’s also danced in a Bollywood film.
The other Thursday event begins in the same room at 8 p.m. and features star Indian investigative journalist and novelist Tarun Tejpal and Vancouver investigative journalist and author Terry Gould. Tejpal has been an editor of India Today and Indian Express, and managing editor of Outlook. He founded the weekly newsmagazine Tehelka, which has developed a reputation for exposing corruption. Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul described Tejpal’s novel The Alchemy of Desire as “a new and brilliantly original novel from India”. Meanwhile, Gould has spent more than 20 years writing about organized crime and press freedom. His most recent book, Murder Without Borders: Dying for the Story in the World’s Most Dangerous Places, won several awards.
Find more about these and other literary events at the Indian Summer Festival website.
