The first Mysuru Literary Fest organised by the Mysore Literary Association will be held tomorrow (June 18) at Senate Bhavan in Manasagangothri.

As such, Star of Mysore which is the natural media partner, is profiling, since June 13, the eclectic mix of authors who will be a part of the day-long Lit Fest.

Saraswati Samman awardee Dr. S.L. Bhyrappa will inaugurate the Fest tomorrow at 10 am. Eminent historian Dr. Ramachandra Guha will speak at 11.15 am. At 12 noon, June Gaur will converse with renowned novelist Shashi Deshpande. This will be followed by a talk by Distinguished Scholar and critic Prof. Harish Trivedi at 12.45 pm. There will be lunch break for an hour at 1.30 pm.

At 2.30 pm, Geetha Kariappa will be in conversation with well-known novelist Kavery Nambisan. The last session will be a panel discussion on “Role of Media Today,” in which K.B. Ganapathy, Editor-in-Chief, Star of Mysore, writer from Kodagu C.P. Belliappa and Adman R.V. Rajan from Chennai will participate. The session, to be moderated by Dr. H.S. Shivanna, will begin at 3 pm.

After this session, there will be a tea break and the Fest will end with a grand violin concert by Mysore Nagaraj and Dr. Mysore Manjunath and party between 4.30 pm and 6 pm.

Dr. S.L. Bhyrappa, Renowned Novelist

Santeshivara Lingannaiah Bhyrappa (born 26 July 1934) is a Kannada writer, whose works are popular in his home State of Karnataka as well as all over India and in other parts of the world. Dr. Bhyrappa is widely regarded as one of modern India’s foremost novelists. His novels are unique in terms of theme, structure and characterisation. He has been among the top-selling authors of Kannada language. Books written by him are translated into Hindi, Marathi and many other languages and have also been on the top-sellers’ list. He has been awarded the prestigious literary award Saraswati Samman in 2010. In March 2015, Dr. Bhyrappa was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award and the PadmaShri in 2016.

Dr. Bhyrappa started with Bheemakaya, first published in 1958. He has authored twenty-four novels in a career spanning more than five decades. Vamshavruksha, Tabbaliyu Neenade Magane, Matadana and Nayi Neralu were made into films that received critical acclaim. Vamshavruksha received Kannada Sahitya Akademi Award (1966) and Daatu (Crossing Over) received both Kannada and Kendra Sahitya Akademi Awards (1975). Parva, the most critically acclaimed of all his novels, narrates the social structure, values and morality in the epic Mahabharata very effectively. Dr. Bhyrappa reconstructs the Mahabharata from sociological and anthropological angle, through metaphors in this novel.

Most of his novels have been reprinted several times. His recently published novel Aavarana was sold out even before its release. The novel went on to create a record in Indian literary circles with ten reprints within five months of its release. His writing is inspirational and a huge contribution to the field of literature.

Dr. Ramachandra Guha, Eminent Historian

Ramachandra Guha (born April 29, 1958) is an Indian historian and writer whose research interests are diverse which include environmental, social, political and cricket history.

He is a columnist for The Telegraph and Hindustan Times. A regular contributor to various academic journals, Dr. Guha has also written for The Caravan and Outlook magazines. In the year 2011-2012, he held a visiting position at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), the Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs. He published Gandhi Before India in 2013, the first part of a planned two-volume biography of Mahatma Gandhi which describes life from his childhood to the two decades in South Africa. Another collection of essays under the title ‘Democrats and Dissenters’ was released in September 2016.

Guha is considered as one of the major historians of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He has a wide variety of works, covering a range of fields that has made him a significant figure in Indian historical studies.

His achievements include essay, “Prehistory of Community Forestry in India”, that was awarded the Leopold-Hidy Prize of the American Society for Environmental History for 2001 and “A Corner of a Foreign Field” was awarded the Daily Telegraph Cricket Society Book of the Year Prize for 2002. He won the R.K. Narayan Prize at the Chennai Book Fair in 2003.

The US magazine Foreign Policy named him as one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world in May 2008. In the poll that followed, Dr. Guha was placed 44th. Padma Bhushan in 2009, India’s third highest civilian award. In 2011, Sahitya Akademi Award for India after Gandhi. In 2014, Guha was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Humanities by Yale University. Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize, 2015. He was appointed to BCCI’s panel of administrators by the Supreme Court of India on Jan. 30, 2017. Guha resigned from the Board this month.

NOTE: Dr. Guha is going to talk on “History beyond Chauvinism” at the Lit Fest.