These are stirring times for Asian literature in Britain. Next month the three-week Asia House Festival of Asian Literature will take place in London. The line-up of authors, Asian and non-Asian, includes Fatima Bhutto, Hilary Spurling, Neel Mukherjee, William Dalrymple, Yasmin Ablihai-Brown and BBC foreign correspondent Humphrey Hawksley. At the same time, an exciting new initiative has been announced: the inaugural DSC South Asian Literature Festival, to be held in multiple venues in London in October. One striking development on the South Asian literary scene in Britain, which has hitherto been dominated by Indian writers, is the increasing prominence of Pakistani authors. This trend is reflected by the fact that when two leading Pakistani writers Aamer Hussein and Ali Sethi participated in an Asia House pre-festival event on the evolution of Pakistani fiction, they were interviewed by BBC TV and radio stations. The presenter of Radio 4's flagship new and current affairs program Today James Naughtie observed that Pakistan has attracted considerable notoriety in recent times for bombings, political turmoil and instability, but “a new wave of writers is apparently determined to show the country in quite a different light.” Hussein and Sethi represent two generations of writers. Hussein was born in Karachi in 1955 and has lived in London since 1970. He is the author of five collections of highly regarded short stories and the novel “Another Golmahar Tree”. Harvard-educated Sethi (son of prominent journalist and commentator Najam Sethi) was born in Lahore in 1984. His debut novel “The Wish Maker”, published last year, made him a literary sensation. Other Pakistani writers to have attracted much attention in the past few years include Mohsin Hamid, Mohammed Hanif, Kamila Shamsie and Daniyal Mueenuddin. At he event, Hussein said: “Three or four young Pakistani writers have been very prominent in the ranks of prizewinners, or people nominated for prizes, and that has given much more exposure to the Pakistani novel as a genre.” He thinks that readers find truths in the work of such writers that “it wouldn't be easy for them to acquire from reading newspapers or even travel books written mostly by Westerners”. The new generation of Pakistani writers “live in Lahore or Karachi, or elsewhere, travel back and forth very easily, and are very cosmopolitan, very confident and yet very committed to telling stories about themselves and their cultures.” In Sethi's view: “The way the Western media is fixated upon Pakistan now, it's in the context of the war on terror. And so there is this wider interest now in what Pakistani writing in all its complexity is about because Pakistan is not an easy place to figure out.” The star attraction on the opening night of the Asia House festival will be Fatima Bhutto. Her father, Benazir Bhutto's brother Murtaza Bhutto, was shot dead by police in Karachi 1996. Bhutto will be talking to the award-winning journalist and author Janine di Giovanni about her book “Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter's Memoir”. Two Pakistan-born poets, Moniza Alvi and Imtiaz Dharker, will take part in a festival session on diaspora poetry along with Indian-born Kavita Jindal and Daljit Nagra who was born in the UK to parents from Indian Punjab. The festival, first held in 2007, claims to be the first and only literary festival in the UK dedicated to writing about Asia. It was founded by Adrienne Loftus Parkins, who is its director. Asia House describes itself as the leading pan-Asian organization in Britain, organizing over 125 events annually and engaging with 30 Asian countries. Its literature festival has a wide geographical scope, and includes books related to China, such as Hilary Spurling's biography of American writer and civil rights campaigner Pearl Buck, “Burying the Bones: Pearl Buck's Life in China.” Among the other topics covered this year are Asian crime fiction, Japanese cooking, Korean literature, and the Kashmir conflict. The newly-announced DSC South Asian Literature Festival, running from Oct. 15-24, will comprise forty events over 10 days in places ranging from cutting edge venues such as Kings Place, Rich Mix, and Free Word Centre to the British Library and local libraries, schools and literary cafes. The festival will explore the languages and literature of South Asia through music, dance, spoken word, poetry, prose, the visual arts and literary performance. It will also offer creative writing courses, competitions and other outreach activities. Following the events in London, the festival will travel to major cities across the UK. The festival's sponsor, DSC Limited, is a leading Indian infrastructure company. DSC is the main sponsor of the Jaipur Literature Festival, and has also set up the new DSC Prize for South Asian Literature worth $50,000 to the winner. The longlist or shortlist of the prize will be announced during the inaugural DSC South Asian Literature Festival. The founders of the new festival, Bhavit Mehta and Jon Slack, said in a statement: “We're amazed to see how the South Asian Literature Festival has developed from an idea into reality over the past year. From interaction with publishers, authors and our industry colleagues, we're certain that the project has come at the right time and to the right city.” They added: “It is to the surprise of many that an event of this scale dedicated to South Asian writing hasn't yet been attempted. We hope the Festival, though highly ambitious, will prove to be exciting, creative and inspiring, and we are proud to be part of it.” Mehta is the founder of Saadhak Books, a publishing house specializing in South Asian folktales for children. Slack is an experienced print and online media project manager and a former chair of the Society of Young Publishers.
