Dhaka Lit Fest (also known as Dhaka Literary Festival or DLF) is an annual

literary festival A literary festival, also known as a book festival or writers' festival, is a regular gathering of writers and readers, typically on an annual basis in a particular city. A literary festival usually features a variety of presentations and readings ...

held in

Dhaka Dhaka ( or ; bn, ঢাকা, Ḍhākā, ), formerly known as Dacca, is the capital and largest city of Bangladesh, as well as the world's largest Bengali-speaking city. It is the eighth largest and sixth most densely populated city i ...

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...

. Since 2012, it has been held every November in the grounds of

Bangla Academy The Bangla Academy ( bn, বাংলা একাডেমি, ) is an autonomous institution funded by the Bangladesh government to foster the Bengali language, literature and culture, to develop and implement national language policy and to d ...

with sessions held over three days, primarily in English.

History

Dhaka Lit Fest began as The Hay Festival Dhaka with the support of the

British Council The British Council is a British organisation specialising in international cultural and educational opportunities. It works in over 100 countries: promoting a wider knowledge of the United Kingdom and the English language (and the Welsh lan ...

Dhaka in 2011. In 2015, its current three directors, Sadaf Saaz, Ahsan Akbar and

Kazi Anis Ahmed Kazi Anis Ahmed (Bengali: কাজী আনিস আহমেদ) is a Bangladeshi writer, publisher and businessman. He is a co-founder and publisher of the English-language daily newspaper ''Dhaka Tribune'', online news portal ''Bangla Tri ...

, renamed the festival as "Dhaka Lit Fest" to "mark its commitment to promoting Dhaka, and Bangladeshi literature and culture to the world." After the

July 2016 Dhaka attack On the night of 1 July 2016, at 21:20 local time, five militants took hostages and opened fire on the Holey Artisan Bakery in Gulshan Thana. The assailants entered the bakery with crude bombs, machetes, pistols, and took several dozen hostages ...

, the festival suffered 19 international cancellations. Despite that, the organizers held the festival to show that Bangladesh could still hold an international cultural festival in the face of terrorism. Casey Quackenbush wrote that, "Bangladesh, where independent bloggers and journalists have increasingly become targets of violence, the Dhaka Literary Festival has become a symbol of defiance." That year, the headline author was the Nobel laureate

V. S. Naipaul Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (; 17 August 1932 – 11 August 2018) was a Trinidadian-born British writer of works of fiction and nonfiction in English. He is known for his comic early novels set in Trinidad, his bleaker novels of alienati ...

. In 2017, Dhaka Lit Fest was chosen to host the awarding of the

DSC Prize for South Asian Literature The DSC Prize for South Asian Literature is an international literary prize awarded annually to writers of any ethnicity or nationality writing about South AsiaNote: South Asia for the purposes of the prize is defined as India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka ...

. The winner was Anuk Arudpragasam for his novel, The Story of a Brief Marriage.

Organizers

The festival was initiated by Bangladeshi writers Sadaf Saaz, Tahmima Anam, Ahsan Akbar and Kazi Anis Ahmed as Hay Festival Dhaka. , its directors are Sadaf Saaz (also producer), Ahsan Akbar and

Notable guests

Notable international guests include V. S. Naipul,

Adunis Ali Ahmad Said Esber (, North Levantine: ; born 1 January 1930), also known by the pen name Adonis or Adunis ( ar, أدونيس ), is a Syrian poet, essayist and translator. He led a modernist revolution in the second half of the 20th century, ...

Shashi Tharoor Shashi Tharoor (; ; born 9 March 1956 in London, England ) is an Indian former international civil servant, diplomat, bureaucrat and politician, writer and public intellectual who has been serving as Member of Parliament for Thiruvananthapuram, ...

William Dalrymple (historian) William Dalrymple (born William Hamilton-Dalrymple on 20 March 1965) is a Delhi-based Scottish historian and art historian, as well as a curator, photographer, broadcaster and critic. He is also one of the co-founders and co-directors of the w ...

Tilda Swinton Katherine Matilda Swinton (born 5 November 1960) is a British actress. Known for her roles in independent films and blockbusters, she has received various accolades, including an Academy Award and a British Academy Film Award, in addition t ...

, Marcel Theroux,

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver (born Margaret Ann Shriver; May 18, 1957) is an American author and journalist who lives in the United Kingdom. Her novel '' We Need to Talk About Kevin'' won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2005. Early life and education Shriver ...

Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay ( bn, শীর্ষেন্দু মুখোপাধ্যায়; born 2 November 1935) is a Bengali author from India. He has written stories for both adults and children. He is known for creating the relativel ...

, Mohammed Hanif,

Nandita Das Nandita Das (born 7 November 1969) is an Indian actress and director. She has acted in over 40 feature films in ten different languages. Das appeared in the films ''Fire'' (1996), ''Earth'' (1998), '' Bawandar'' (2000), '' Kannathil Muthamittal' ...

Monica Ali Monica Ali FRSL (born 20 October 1967) is a British writer of Bangladeshi and English heritage. In 2003, she was selected as one of the "Best of Young British Novelists" by ''Granta'' magazine based on her unpublished manuscript; her debut nove ...

, HM Naqvi,

Tishani Doshi Tishani Doshi (born 9 December 1975) is an Indian poet, journalist and dancer based in Chennai. In 2006 she won the Forward Prize for her debut poetry book ''Countries of the Body''. Her poetry book ''A God at the Door'' has been shortlisted fo ...

, Swapnamoy Chakraborty, James Meek (author),

Jude Kelly Judith "Jude" Pamela Kelly, (born March 1954), is a British theatre director and producer. She is a director of the WOW Foundation, which organises the annual Women of the World Festival, founded in 2010 by Kelly. From 2006 to 2018, she was Ar ...

, and Jon Snow (journalist), among many others. Prominent Bangladeshi guests include:

Asaduzzaman Noor Asaduzzaman Noor (born 31 October 1946) is a Bangladeshi actor, politician and activist. He has been a Jatiya Sangsad member from Nilphamari-2 constituency since 2001 and served as the Cultural Affairs Minister during 2014–2019. Noor work ...

, Syed Manzoorul Islam, Imdadul Haq Milan,

Kaiser Haq Kaiser Hamidul Haq (born 7 December 1950) is a Bangladeshi translator, critic and academic. Known for his translations from Bengali into English, Haq is a recipient of Bangla Academy Literary Award (2013) in the category of translation. He is a fo ...

Selina Hossain Selina Hossain (born 14 June 1947) is a Bangladeshi novelist and the current president of Bangla Academy since February 2022. Her major works include ''Hangor Nodi Grenade'' (1976) and ''Poka Makorer Ghor Boshoti'' (1996). She earned all major nat ...

Aly Zaker Aly Zaker (6 November 1944 – 27 November 2020) was a Bangladeshi actor, businessman, director and writer. He was the owner of Asiatic Marketing Communications Limited (Asiatic 3 Sixty). Zaker served as a freedom fighter during the 1971 Bangl ...

, Shaheen Akhtar, Nishat Majumdar, Raja

Devasish Roy Devasish Roy (also spelled Debashish Roy; born 9 April 1959) is a Bangladeshi politician and lawyer. He is the titular Raja of the Chakma Circle, Bangladesh's largest indigenous community, and was a member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on ...

, and Muktasree Chakmaamong, among many others.

Reception

DLF has been praised both locally and internationally for its commitment to cultural exchange, freedom of expression and a balance of international and Bengali cultures. The festival's sponsors have been commended for ensuring DLF is free to attend and well-organized. Some observers have described DLF organizers as Anglophile bourgeois who are the agents of neo-imperial western hegemony in Bangladesh and speculate that they initiated the event to promote themselves as writers in English and groom their own fandom in Dhaka. In response, the organizers point to the significant number of Bengali-language (and other local indigenous Bangladeshi languages) panels, the fact that attendance is free, as well as its celebration of local Bangladeshi literary figures and publishing houses. This view is supported by guests and journalists attending the festival.

References

External links

*{{Official website Literary festivals in Bangladesh Cultural festivals in Dhaka