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 ; , ), List of renamed places in Bangladesh, formerly known as Dacca, is the capital city, capital and list of cities and towns in Bangladesh, largest city of Bangladesh. It is one of the list of largest cities, largest and list o ...

Bangladesh Bangladesh, officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, eighth-most populous country in the world and among the List of countries and dependencies by ...

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

Bangla Academy The Bangla Academy (, ) is the official regulatory body of the Bengali language in Bangladesh. It is an autonomous institution funded by the Government of Bangladesh that fosters the Bengali language, literature and culture, works to develop an ...

with sessions held over three days, primarily in English.

History

Dhaka Lit Fest began as The

Hay Festival Dhaka Dhaka Lit Fest (also known as Dhaka Literary Festival or DLF) is an annual literary festival held in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Since 2012, it has been held every November in the grounds of Bangla Academy with sessions held over three days, primarily in ...

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 lang ...

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

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

, 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 Bangladesh Standard Time ( UTC+06:00), five terrorists took hostages and opened fire on the Holey Artisan Bakery in Gulshan Thana jurisdiction in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The terrorists entered the bakery with c ...

, 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. 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 Anuk Arudpragasam () (born 1988) is a Sri Lankan Tamil novelist writing in English and Tamil. His debut novel '' The Story of a Brief Marriage'' was published in 2016 by Flatiron Books/Granta Books and was subsequently translated into French, Ger ...

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,

Amitav Ghosh Amitav Ghosh (born 11 July 1956)Ghosh, Amitav
, ''

Abdulrazak Gurnah Abdulrazak Gurnah (born 20 December 1948) is a Tanzanian-born British novelist and academic. He was born in the Sultanate of Zanzibar and moved to the United Kingdom in the 1960s as a refugee during the Zanzibar Revolution. His novels includ ...

Adunis Ali Ahmad Said Esber (, Levantine Arabic, North Levantine ; born 1 January 1930), also known by the pen name Adonis or Adunis ( ), is a Syrian people, Syrian poet, essayist and translator. Maya Jaggi, writing for The Guardian stated "He led a mod ...

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, Marcel Theroux,

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Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay (; 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 relatively new fictional sleuths Barodacharan and Shabor Dasgupta. Life Shi ...

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, HM Naqvi,

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Swapnamoy Chakraborty Swapnamoy Chakraborty (born 24 August 1951) is a Bengalis, Bengali novelist and essayist. Career Chakraborty was born in Kolkata. He worked in the Land Department under the Government of West Bengal and All India Radio, Akashvani Kolkata as an ...

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, and

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, among many others. Prominent Bangladeshi guests include:

Asaduzzaman Noor Asaduzzaman Noor (born 31 October 1946) is a Bangladeshi actor, politician and activist. He was a Jatiya Sangsad member representing the Nilphamari-2 constituency during 2001–2024 and served as the Ministry of Cultural Affairs (Bangladesh), c ...

Syed Manzoorul Islam Syed Manzoorul Islam (born 18 January 1951) is a Bangladeshi critic, writer and a former professor of Dhaka University. As a literary critic, he has written criticism on writers including Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Kazi Nazrul Islam, Sudhindranat ...

, 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 ...

Selina Hossain Selina Hossain (born 14 June 1947) is a Bangladeshi novelist. Her major works include ''Hangor Nodi Grenade'' (1976) and ''Poka Makorer Ghor Boshoti'' (1996). She earned all major national awards – Bangla Academy Literary Award in 1980, Ekushey ...

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, 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